Methods and systems for generating an ephemeral content message

ABSTRACT

Exemplary embodiments relate to techniques for sending ephemeral content messages via a communications service. An interface may be presented to allow a user to initially access ephemeral content functionality and select content for inclusion in the ephemeral content message. The interface may present a streamlined set of use cases without regard to the manner in which the content was initially captured. Different types of content may be used as ephemeral content, including images, videos, weather reports, news stories, text, audio recordings, location tags, etc. The ephemeral content may be sent through the communications service as an end-to-end encrypted message. When a user replies to an ephemeral content message, the reply may trigger a one-to-one conversation between the originating user and the replying user. Alternatively, an ephemeral content message may be initially sent to a selected group, and replies may be sent back to the entire group.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application Ser.No. 62/460,136, filed on Feb. 17, 2017 and entitled “Methods and Systemsfor Processing an Ephemeral Content Message.” The contents of theaforementioned application are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND

Some services, such as communications services, messaging services, andsocial networking services, allow users to exchange messages with otherusers. Some messages, such as update messages, may be broadcast to usersof the service who are able to view communications from the sending user(e.g., the sending user's contacts, or the public at large).

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A depicts an exemplary interface for a messaging application.

FIG. 1B depicts an exemplary interface for sharing ephemeral content.

FIG. 1C depicts an exemplary interface for capturing ephemeral contentto be shared.

FIG. 1D depicts the interface of FIG. 1B after sharing ephemeralcontent.

FIG. 1E depicts an exemplary interface for selecting recipients ofephemeral content.

FIG. 1F depicts an exemplary interface for changing privacy settings todetermine which users receive shared ephemeral content.

FIG. 1G depicts an exemplary interface for viewing ephemeral content ina conversation in the messaging service.

FIG. 1H depicts an exemplary interface displaying an enlarged version ofephemeral content containing an image or video.

FIG. 1I depicts an exemplary interface for replying to ephemeral contentcontaining an image or video.

FIG. 1J depicts an exemplary interface for displaying a conversationincluding a reply to ephemeral content.

FIG. 1K depicts an exemplary interface for sharing ephemeral contentfrom within a conversation.

FIG. 1L depicts an exemplary content for selecting content to be sharedfrom within a conversation.

FIG. 1M depicts an exemplary interface displaying an enlarged version ofephemeral content containing an audio recording.

FIG. 1N depicts an exemplary interface displaying an enlarged version ofephemeral content containing a location.

FIG. 1O depicts an exemplary interface displaying an enlarged version ofephemeral content containing a weather report.

FIG. 1P depicts an exemplary interface displaying an enlarged version ofephemeral content containing a news item.

FIG. 2 depicts an exemplary system suitable for applying end-to-endencryption to an ephemeral content message.

FIG. 3A depicts an exemplary data structure representing a clientdatabase.

FIG. 3B depicts an exemplary data structure representing a messageincluding session setup information.

FIG. 3C depicts an exemplary data structure representing a message aftersession setup has occurred.

FIG. 3D depicts exemplary messages transmitted in a network in order toexchange media files in an end-to-end encrypted communications system.

FIG. 3E depicts an exemplary ephemeral content message.

FIG. 3F depicts exemplary contacts lists having symmetric and asymmetricrelationships.

FIG. 4 is an exemplary data flow diagram showing information exchangeaccording to an exemplary embodiment.

FIG. 5A is a flowchart depicting exemplary sending-client-side logic forgenerating an ephemeral content message.

FIG. 5B is a flowchart depicting exemplary sending-client-side logic forprocessing a request to enter into a content sharing interface.

FIG. 6A is a flowchart depicting exemplary server-side logic forprocessing a transmission of an ephemeral content message.

FIG. 6B is a flowchart depicting exemplary server-side logic forfiltering a list of contacts.

FIG. 7A is a flowchart depicting exemplary receiving-client-side logicfor displaying an ephemeral content message.

FIG. 7B is a flowchart depicting exemplary receiving-client-side logicfor ranking ephemeral content.

FIG. 8A is a block diagram providing an overview of a system includingan exemplary centralized communications service;

FIG. 8B is a block diagram providing an overview of a system includingan exemplary distributed communications service;

FIG. 8C depicts the social networking graph of FIGS. 8A-8B in moredetail;

FIG. 9 is a block diagram depicting an example of a system for amessaging service;

FIG. 10 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary computing devicesuitable for use with exemplary embodiments;

FIG. 11 depicts an exemplary communication architecture; and

FIG. 12 is a block diagram depicting an exemplary multicarriercommunications device.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Exemplary embodiments relate to techniques for generating, processing,and displaying ephemeral content via ephemeral content messages.Ephemeral content messages may be, for example, messages in whichephemeral content is included. Ephemeral content includes content thatis configured to be accessible for only a limited period or underlimited conditions. When ephemeral content expires, the content may bedeleted or may become inaccessible.

Although described in connection with ephemeral content, some techniquesdescribed herein, such as the filtering and ranking techniquesdescribed, may be employed in connection with ephemeral or non-ephemeralcontent.

In the context of ephemeral content messages, a number of problems existwith current messaging techniques. For instance, the manner in whichcontent is selected or generated for inclusion in a conventional messagemay be overly complicated; depending on the type of content, anddepending on the manner in which the content is generated, a user mayenter send the content to another user of a communications service indifferent ways. In one example, a user may generate a text-based messagein a different manner than a picture-based message. Even within acategory, entry points may differ. In another example, a user maygenerate a picture-based message in one way when selecting apreviously-captured photograph, and another way when the user desires tocapture a new photograph for the message.

Some communications systems may also allow users to reply to a messageincluding content. One way in which replies may be implemented is toattach the reply to an existing conversation among multiple users, or tostart a new conversation having a specified group of users in responseto the ephemeral content. However, because the replying user may not beprivy to the entire list of recipients to whom the original message wassent, such techniques may cause replies to be sent to additional usersthat did not receive the initial message transmission. Such behavior maybe undesirable from the perspective of the person sending the originalcontent-based message, since that person may wish to exclude certainpeople from the message or limit the message to a well-defined group.

Furthermore, due to the manner in which content-based messages arebroadcast to users, it may be difficult to maintain privacy. Forinstance, when a content-based message is broadcast, the content-basedmessage is typically transmitted to an intermediate server to handle thebroadcasting. Preferably (from the standpoint of privacy), only thesender and the recipient of the content-based message would be able toexamine the content of the message. However, when a broadcast message issent to the server for transmission to receiving clients, it can bedifficult to provide the broadcast server with sufficient information toallow the broadcast server to send the message without disclosinginformation that the sending user wishes to remain safe frominterception.

Still further, communications systems may take different approaches toreducing spam or unwanted messages. For example, in a social network,ephemeral content might be sent to those users that have a definedrelationship with the sending user (such as friends of the sendinguser). However, not all messaging services or social networking servicesincorporate a concept of relationships or friendship. For example, asimple message service (SMS) based system, or another type ofcontact-based messaging service, may allow a user to send messages toany other recipient based on the recipient's phone number. In theseexamples, there may not be a defined relationship between users.

In a system involving defined relationships, the system may avoid spamcommunications by only allowing users to communicate with each other (orto communicate with each other in a preferred form) if the users have arelationship. For example, a person may only see content-based messagesof their own friends. This may not be possible in a communicationssystem that does not rely on a defined concept of friendship.

Yet another issue with communications systems providing ephemeralcontent capabilities is that the interfaces of such systems can becomejumbled, and it may be difficult to discern ephemeral content messagesfrom other types of messages. For example, in a communications systemthat allows users to submit posts, ephemeral content may be displayedamong the posts. Similarly, in a messaging-based system, ephemeralcontent may be displayed among the messages. However, because ephemeralcontent is typically used to convey different kinds of information ascompared to posts or messages, a user desiring to check on the ephemeralcontent of their contacts may not wish to sift through large numbers ofposts or messages in order to see their contacts' ephemeral content.

Similarly, when ephemeral content is mixed with messages, onestraightforward technique for displaying the ephemeral content would beto arrange it among the messages in the order that each respectivemessage/unit of ephemeral content was received. Although chronologicalordering may make sense for messages, users are often more interested incertain ephemeral content as compared to others (e.g., from their familyor close friends, as opposed to general acquaintances). Thus, purelychronological ordering of ephemeral content may not produce aparticularly useful display of the ephemeral content.

Furthermore, when an ephemeral content message includes media (e.g., apicture, a video, etc.), it may be difficult to ensure that a receivinguser is able to access the media while preserving end-to-end encryption.Moreover, ephemeral content messages may be broadcast to a relativelylarge number of people. In some ephemerality models, the ephemeralcontent may expire at different times for different recipients. It maybe difficult to make the ephemeral content available to some users forwhom the ephemeral content has not yet expired, while making the contentunavailable to other users for whom the ephemeral content has expired.

Another issue that can arise in communications systems that provideephemeral content is the problem of maintaining privacy forpreviously-transmitted ephemeral content. In some systems, users performan operation to receive updates about other users. For example, in asocial networking service, one user may become friends with another useror may follow the user in order to see the user's statuses. Such aconfiguration is referred to as a follow model.

In a follow model, the ephemeral content that a sending user submitsprior to being followed by a new user may become visible to the new userwhen the new user follows the sending user. In other words, ephemeralcontent sent before the two users became connected may become visibleafter the connection is made. This behavior may be undesirable for someusers, who may wish to maintain their previous ephemeral content asprivate from new followers.

The follow model may also give rise to problems in preserving end-to-endencryption of ephemeral content messages. Because many of the parameters(e.g., message keys) used to encrypt ephemeral content messages aredecided at the time that the message is sent, it may not be possible tomaintain strong encryption if the ephemeral content message is latermade available to new followers. If encryption is to be maintained, newencryption sessions may need to be generated post hoc, adding to theoverhead of the communications system.

To address these and other issues, exemplary embodiments provide newtechniques for sending ephemeral content messages for a communicationsor messaging service.

Streamlined entry points are provided for initially generating a messageincluding content (such as ephemeral content), and for replying toephemeral content messages previously sent. Initial entry points focuson a limited number of clearly-defined use cases, regardless of the typeof the content or how the content was originally generated.

Initial entry to the ephemeral content message functionality may beprovided by two clear and streamlined use cases, regardless of how themedia is initially captured. The system may present the user with anoption to share media in an ephemeral content message, or to share themedia in a non-ephemeral content message, such as in a conversation orchat. Accordingly, the problem of identifying the appropriate entrypoint based on the type of media generated is alleviated. Many differenttypes of media can be used as ephemeral content, including images suchas photos and GIFs, videos, weather reports, news, text, tags, PTT orvoice messages, etc.

The ephemeral content may be sent as a message in order to preserveend-to-end encryption. Various aspects described herein facilitate theencapsulation of the ephemeral content as a message, and further providetechniques for sharing media in connection with the message in a mannerthat is efficient but still preserves the privacy of the sending user.

When a user replies to ephemeral content, the reply may trigger aone-to-one chat between the originating user and the replying user.Accordingly, the privacy of the originally sending user is preserved.Alternatively, ephemeral content may be initially sent to a group(instead of the user's entire contacts list) and replies may be sentback to the group. Such an embodiment continues to preserve the sendinguser's privacy, since only the original group members that the sendinguser chose to share the ephemeral content message with are included inthe conversation. To facilitate group communications, the server mayexamine the group's membership and verify that an encrypted sessionexists between each member of the group.

Further embodiments, which may be used in conjunction with theembodiments described above, relate to procedures for transmitting anephemeral content message through a communications network.

Initially, the sending client may establish an end-to-end encryptedsession with possible recipients of the ephemeral content (e.g., theuser's contacts list, or a selected group) and may provide a first keyduring initial setup. The client sends the message to the recipientsthrough a server using the encrypted session. The message includesencrypted content, which may be a thumbnail of a media item and a linkor pointer to the media item, and a second key for decrypting the mediaitem.

The recipient decrypts the content using the first key, retrieves thesecond key from the message, and uses the second key to decrypt theencrypted content. The server (or an outside user) is not able toretrieve the encrypted portion of the message because the server (or theoutside user) does not possess the first key sent during initial setupof the encrypted session (therefore, the server or outside user cannotretrieve the second key that decrypts the content).

The server may receive a list of intended recipients from the sendinguser, and filters the list to reduce spam or unwanted messages. Forexample, the server filters out those users without a symmetricrelationship to the sender, or any users the sender blocks or who areblocked by the sender. Because the server filters the potentialrecipients based on symmetry, no concept of friendship or a definedrelationship between users is needed in order to reduce unwantedmessages.

The sending client may cycle the second key each time the recipient listchanges from the perspective of the client. This decision is made at thetime the ephemeral content is transmitted; in some embodiments, theephemeral content is not retransmitted when a new symmetricalrelationship is created (e.g., when a user in the sender's contacts listadds the sender to their own contacts list after transmission of theephemeral content).

Because ephemeral content is directed to potential recipients by thesender, and because new contacts do not retrieve or access previousephemeral content, exemplary embodiments may implement a directed modelof sharing ephemeral content, rather than the follow model describedabove. Thus, sending users have more control over who sees theirephemeral content, and when.

Further embodiments, which may be used in conjunction with theembodiments described above, relate to techniques for displaying andinteracting with ephemeral content.

Although the ephemeral content is transmitted as a message (in order topreserve encryption), the message may be tagged with a flag thatdesignates it as ephemeral content. Recipient clients know to show thecontents of the message as ephemeral content instead of a regularmessage when the flag is present.

Ephemerality of content may be implemented by packaging the ephemeralcontent message with a thumbnail of a media item and a link or pointerto the media item stored on a server. When the ephemeral content expires(e.g., in 24 hours, after 1 or 2 views, etc.), the thumbnail remains inthe messaging history, but the link may become inactive. While the linkis active, the user may select the link to go into a full-screenpresentation of the ephemeral content.

Different media types may be associated with different types offull-screen presentations. For example, a location update may bring upan image with map data indicating the tagged location.

When the ephemeral content expires, the link may become inactive. A userattempting to access the inactive link may be unable to access the mediaitem. Nonetheless, the media item may continue to reside on the serverand remain available for those users whose link remains active. Thus,the link may become inactive for different users at different times.

Ephemeral content may be provided in the UI on a separate tab ascompared to non-ephemeral content. Displayed ephemeral content fromdifferent users may be ranked based on an interest score and displayedin the ranked order. The interest score may be calculated based on,e.g.: (1) who's ephemeral content has been viewed previously; (2) thepercentage of ephemeral content from a particular user that has beenviewed; (3) who's ephemeral content has been viewed on a regular basis(e.g., every day/week/month); (4) which ephemeral content is recent;etc. The ephemeral content may be displayed in the separate tab(s) inthe ranked order. Accordingly, the ephemeral content need not be mixedwith messages or posts, and the problem of a crowded or jumbled displaymay be addressed. Moreover, the rankings may allow a user to quicklyfind interesting or high-priority ephemeral content without the need tosort through ephemeral content in which the user may have less interest.

This brief summary is intended to serve as a non-limiting introductionto the concepts discussed in more detail below. However, beforediscussing further exemplary embodiments, a brief note on data privacyis first provided. A more detailed description of privacy settings andauthentication will be addressed in connection with the followingFigures.

A Note on Data Privacy

Some embodiments described herein make use of training data or metricsthat may include information voluntarily provided by one or more users.In such embodiments, data privacy may be protected in a number of ways.

For example, the user may be required to opt in to any data collectionbefore user data is collected or used. The user may also be providedwith the opportunity to opt out of any data collection. Before opting into data collection, the user may be provided with a description of theways in which the data will be used, how long the data will be retained,and the safeguards that are in place to protect the data fromdisclosure.

Any information identifying the user from which the data was collectedmay be purged or disassociated from the data. In the event that anyidentifying information needs to be retained (e.g., to meet regulatoryrequirements), the user may be informed of the collection of theidentifying information, the uses that will be made of the identifyinginformation, and the amount of time that the identifying informationwill be retained. Information specifically identifying the user may beremoved and may be replaced with, for example, a generic identificationnumber or other non-specific form of identification.

Once collected, the data may be stored in a secure data storage locationthat includes safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to the data. Thedata may be stored in an encrypted format. Identifying informationand/or non-identifying information may be purged from the data storageafter a predetermined period of time.

Although particular privacy protection techniques are described hereinfor purposes of illustration, one of ordinary skill in the art willrecognize that privacy protected in other manners as well. Furtherdetails regarding data privacy are discussed below in the sectiondescribing network embodiments.

Assuming a user's privacy conditions are met, exemplary embodiments maybe deployed in a wide variety of messaging systems, including messagingin a social network or on a mobile device (e.g., through a messagingclient application or via short message service), among otherpossibilities. An overview of exemplary logic and processes for engagingin synchronous video conversation in a messaging system is next provided

As an aid to understanding, a series of examples will first be presentedbefore detailed descriptions of the underlying implementations aredescribed. It is noted that these examples are intended to beillustrative only and that the present invention is not limited to theembodiments shown.

Exemplary Interfaces

Reference is now made to the drawings, wherein like reference numeralsare used to refer to like elements throughout. In the followingdescription, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details areset forth in order to provide a thorough understanding thereof. However,the novel embodiments can be practiced without these specific details.In other instances, well known structures and devices are shown in blockdiagram form in order to facilitate a description thereof. The intentionis to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives consistentwith the claimed subject matter.

In the Figures and the accompanying description, the designations “a”and “b” and “c” (and similar designators) are intended to be variablesrepresenting any positive integer. Thus, for example, if animplementation sets a value for a=5, then a complete set of components122 illustrated as components 122-1 through 122-a may include components122-1, 122-2, 122-3, 122-4, and 122-5. The embodiments are not limitedin this context.

FIG. 1A depicts an exemplary interface 100 for a communicationapplication. The communication application may allow the user toexchange communications, such as messages and ephemeral content, withother users of a communications service. The interface may displaymessages organized into conversations/chats.

A conversation or chat may be associated with a conversation identifierthat identifies the conversation or chat. The conversation identifiermay further be associated with a group of participants that participatein the conversation.

A user may contribute to a conversation/chat by sending a message usingthe interface 100. For example, the interface 100 may include acomposition indicator for composing a new message. When composing a newmessage, an interface may be presented allowing the user to target thenew message to an existing conversation, and/or to specify a set ofrecipients. If the specified set of recipients corresponds to a set ofrecipients for whom a conversation already exists, the message may betargeted to the existing conversation. If not, a new conversation may becreated between the specified recipients. The message may be tagged withthe conversation ID of the identified conversation.

The interface 100 may display recent conversations and information aboutthe conversation (e.g., participants, a snippet of the most recentmessage, a time and sender of the most recent message, etc.).

The interface 100 may include a menu or interactable elements allowingfunctionality of the communication to be accessed. For example, theexemplary interface 100 includes a camera icon 102 allowing a camerainterface to be accessed for capturing a photograph or video. Theinterface 100 further includes an ephemeral content icon 104 allowingephemeral content to be generated and/or viewed. These elements areexemplary, and in other embodiments other types of elements may bepresent. For example, in addition to or in place of the camera icon 102,one or more media icons may be provided for generating, accessing, orselecting different types of media.

FIG. 1B depicts an exemplary ephemeral content interface 106 displayedupon receiving a selection of the ephemeral content icon 104. Theephemeral content interface 106 may provide a location for interactingwith ephemeral content shared by users of the communications service,which is distinct from interfaces for viewing other types of content(e.g., non-ephemeral messages, posts, etc.).

The ephemeral content interface may include an interactable element 108allowing new ephemeral content to be generated or selected. Uponselecting the interactable element 108, the application may display aninterface for generating or selecting content. For example, selectingthe interactable element 108 may cause a camera interface to bedisplayed, as shown in FIG. 1C in order to generate new photo or videocontent. Alternatively or in addition, selecting the interactableelement 108 may cause a menu to be displayed, similar to the menu shownin FIG. 1L, for generating new ephemeral content or for selectingexisting content to be shared in an ephemeral content message.

The ephemeral content interface 106 may include an interface portion 110for displaying recent ephemeral content that has been shared by thecurrent user. If the current user has not recently (e.g., within apredetermined period of time) shared any ephemeral content, or if allephemeral content shared by the user has expired for each recipient withwhom the content was shared, then an interactable element 108 may bedisplayed in the interface portion 110 to indicate that the user doesnot have any actively shared ephemeral content.

Another portion of the interface 106 may display ephemeral content items112-i available to the current user (e.g., ephemeral content shared withthe current user by other users). The ephemeral content items 112-i mayinclude an identifier for the user that generated the ephemeral contentitem 112-i, and may include a display of a thumbnail 114-i of theephemeral content item 112-i. The thumbnail 114-i may include arepresentation of the ephemeral content, such as a reduced-size versionof the content, a portion of the content, a low-quality version of thecontent, etc. The thumbnail 114-i may be associated with a link orpointer to the content.

Selecting the thumbnail while the link or pointer is active may cause afull-screen or enlarged display of the content to be shown.

In order to implement ephemerality, the link may be made inactive undercertain conditions. For example, the link may be active for a certainnumber of views (e.g., one or two views), or may be active for a certainperiod of time (e.g., a predetermined period of time, such as 24 hours,from when the content is first sent, or a predetermined period of time,such as 24 hours, from when the content is first accessed in thefull-screen or enlarged size by the receiving user). The conditionsunder which the link remains active or becomes inactive may optionallybe configured by the sending user.

The thumbnail 114-i may include an indicator 116-i indicating whetherthe link is active or inactive. For example, the indicator 116-i may bea ring around the thumbnail 114-i that changes color depending on thelink status (e.g., green or blue for active, black or red for inactive)or otherwise changes or disappears when the link becomes inactive. Theindicator 116-i may otherwise graphically distinguish the status of thecontent (e.g., appending a checkmark for an active link, generating aglow effect around an active link, etc.).

In some embodiments, the indicator 116-i may also indicate otherinformation about available ephemeral content. In the example depictedin FIG. 1B, the ring of each indicator 116-i is broken into a number nof segments. The number of segments of the indicator 116-i may representa number of content items available from or associated with the useridentified in conjunction with the thumbnail 114-i. For example, theindicator 116-1 indicates that six ephemeral content items are currentlyavailable from the user Jane. Meanwhile, the indicator 116-2 indicatesthat two ephemeral content items are currently available from the userJoe. The thumbnail 114-i displayed may correspond to a most-recentcontent item available from the identified user.

Although only a single portion of the interface 106 is dedicated toother users' ephemeral content in the example depicted in FIG. 1B, insome embodiments the ephemeral content may be displayed in multipledifferent tabs or portions. For example, a first portion may bededicated to important ephemeral content or ephemeral content that thecommunications service determines are likely to be of interest to theuser. Such a portion may include a predetermined number of highly-rankedephemeral content items, which may be ranked according to an interestscore as described in more detail below. A second portion may bededicated to recent ephemeral content items, such as a predeterminednumber of recently received ephemeral content items, regardless of howthe ephemeral content items would be ranked.

As noted above, upon selecting the interactable element 108, aninterface may be displayed for generating ephemeral content. One exampleof such an interface 118 is depicted in FIG. 1C.

The exemplary interface 118 allows a user to capture a photo or video(although exemplary embodiments are not limited to capturing a photo orvideo, but may also relate to sharing a previously captured photo orvideo, or generating or selecting other types of media). The interface118 may also be displayed when the user selects the camera icon 102 inany interface.

When the interface 118 is entered via the ephemeral content interface106, an indicator 120 may be displayed to designate that the content isbeing captured as ephemeral media. Interacting with the indicator 120may cause the interface to revert to the ephemeral content interface 106without capturing new content. On the other hand, when the interface 118is entered via the camera icon 102, the content captured may benon-ephemeral (and/or may be made ephemeral at a later time);accordingly the indicator 120 may not be shown in this case.

The interface 118 may include a preview portion 122 displaying the mediathat would be captured upon interacting with a capture button 124 (e.g.,a live preview from a camera). Upon receiving a selection of the capturebutton 124, the media displayed in the preview window 122 may becaptured. In some embodiments, the capture button 124 may be amulti-functional capture button. In such embodiments, interacting withthe capture button 124 in one way (e.g., a tap) may cause one type ofmedia, such as a photograph, to be captured, while interacting with thecapture button 124 in another way (e.g., a sustained hold) may causeanother type of media, such as a video, to be captured. The interface118 may also or alternatively include various icons for selectingbetween capture types (e.g., a photograph versus audio versus video).

The interface 118 may include a caption bar 126 for adding a textualcaption to the media, and controls 128 for manipulating the media. Forexample, when the media being captured is a photograph, photo editingtools may be provided, as well as tools for adding images, text, ordrawings to the photograph.

Once the media is captured, manipulated, and/or captioned, a user mayinteract with a finalize element 130 to finalize the media as ephemeralcontent and share the ephemeral content via an ephemeral contentmessage. In some embodiments, interacting with the finalize elementcauses the media to be sent as ephemeral content to a set of recipientsas defined by the sending user's privacy settings (see FIG. 1F).

Once the content has been shared, the application may revert to theephemeral content interface 106, as shown in FIG. 1D. In this case, thefirst portion of the interface may be updated to indicate that the userhas recently shared ephemeral content. For example, a thumbnail 114-3 ofthe recently shared content may take the place of the interactableelement 108 in the first portion. Alternatively, if content waspreviously shared, the thumbnail 114-3 may be updated to show the mostrecent shared content.

In some embodiments, capturing or selecting media (e.g., as was done inFIG. 1C) may cause a sharing interface 132 to be displayed, as shown inFIG. 1E. The sharing interface 132 may include a first portion 134allowing the sending user to transmit the media as ephemeral content toa selected group of users in the sender's contacts list. The group ofusers may be configured through the user's privacy settings as discussedbelow.

The sharing interface 132 may present a second portion 136 allowing theuser to share the media with frequently contacted parties. The partiesmay include individual users or groups of users, who may be selectedbased on which individuals or groups the user has most frequentlycommunicated with over a predetermined period of time (e.g., the pastweek, month, etc.). A third portion 138 may similarly allow the user toshare media with individuals or groups that the user has recentlycommunicated with (e.g., the n most recent communication threads inwhich the user has participated).

Selection elements 140-i may be provided in connection with eachpotential entity with whom the media may be shared. Upon selecting theselection elements 140-i, the selection elements may be updated toindicate that the entity has been selected for inclusion. The user mayselect multiple different entities to receive the content.

When the media is shared with entities in the second portion 136 or thethird portion 138, the media may be shared as non-ephemeral content andmay be added to a conversation corresponding to the selection.Alternatively, depending on the sending user's settings, the content maybe shared into the selected conversations as ephemeral content.

In some embodiments, when the media is shared with entities in thesecond portion 136 or the third portion 138, corresponding ephemeralcontent messages to the designated recipients may be deemed groupmessages and replies to the ephemeral content messages may be added to agroup conversation with the respective recipients as appropriate. Such amessage may be flagged or designated as a group message. On the otherhand, when the media is shared with entities using the first portion 134of the interface, a corresponding ephemeral content message may bedeemed a broadcast and replies to the ephemeral content message may beadded to a one-on-one conversation between the sender and the replier.The message may be flagged or designated as a broadcast.

When the media is shared using the selectable element 140-1 in the firstportion 134 of the interface 132 (corresponding to ephemeral contentsharing option), the media may be transmitted to a predefined set ofusers as ephemeral content. The predefined set of users may be set oradjusted through the user's privacy settings. For example, uponselecting the “ . . . ” indicator in the first portion 134, the user maybe presented with a privacy interface 142, as shown in FIG. 1F.

In the privacy interface 142, the user may select between differentsharing options for sharing the media as ephemeral content. For example,the user may select a “my contacts” option for broadcasting theephemeral content to each of the contacts in the user's contacts list oraddress book. The user may also be presented with an option to share thecontent with each of the contacts in the contacts list, except for aselected subset of excluded users. Selecting or interacting with thisoption may cause an interface to be displayed allowing the sending userto select contacts for exclusion from the transmission. In yet anotheroption, the user may be permitted to select a subset of contacts fromthe contacts list with whom the content should be shared. Selecting orinteracting with this option may cause an interface to be displayedallowing the sending user to select contacts for inclusion in thetransmission.

When the media is transmitted as ephemeral content using the ephemeralcontent sharing option of the first portion 134 as shown in FIG. 1E, themedia may appear in the receiving users' ephemeral content interfaces106 (FIGS. 1B and 1D). When the media is shared to a group orindividual, the media may appear as a message in a conversation betweenthe sending user and the group or individual, as shown in theconversation interface 144 of FIG. 1G.

In this example, a message 146 is added to the conversation withephemeral content. The message 146 may indicate that the content isephemeral (in this example, the message is distinguished from a typicalmessage with the inclusion of a header stating “John's Status”). Themessage may display a thumbnail 114-4 of the content, and may display anindicator 116-4 indicating that ephemerality status of the content(e.g., a blue ring if the content is available, or a black ring if thecontent is not available).

A recipient viewing the conversation interface 144 may interact with thethumbnail 114-4, if the content remains available. Interacting with thethumbnail 114-4 may cause a full-screen (or enlarged size) version ofthe content to be displayed in a visualization interface 148, as shownin FIG. 1H.

The visualization interface 148 may display a full- or high-resolutionversion of the image or video (e.g., as compared to the thumbnailversion). The interface 148 may include a selectable option to exit thefull-screen presentation (e.g., a “back” button), which may return theuser to the previous interface. In some embodiments, entering or exitingthe full-screen presentation may trigger an action (such as incrementinga view counter or starting a timer) related to the ephemerality of thecontent. For example, if the content is intended to be available for alimited number of views, then opening the full-screen presentation mayincrement a view counter, which may be checked each time before thefull-screen presentation is accessed to determine whether the contentremains available (e.g., if the current number of views is less than apredetermined threshold number of views). If the content is intended tobe available for a limited amount of time from when it is first viewed(e.g., 24 hours), then opening the full-screen presentation may start anephemerality timer, which may be checked each time before thefull-screen presentation is accessed to determine whether the contentremains available (e.g., when the timer has not yet expired). In someembodiments, exiting the full-screen presentation may cause any localcopies of the media stored on the device to be deleted.

Any full-screen presentation of ephemeral content may optionally includeindications 150 of other available ephemeral content from the same user.In this case, a number of status bars 150-1, 150-2 are displayed, wherethe number corresponds to the number of available (e.g., unexpired)ephemeral content items that the current (receiving) user can accessfrom the sending user. The number of status bars 150 may correspond tothe number of lines in the border 116 displayed in connection with thethumbnail 114 (see, e.g., FIG. 1B).

Optionally, the ephemeral content displayed in the interface 148 may bedisplayed for a predetermined period of time. A timer may be startedwhen the full-screen view is entered, and upon expiration of the timer,the system may advance the displayed ephemeral content to the nextavailable ephemeral content. A status bar 150-1 corresponding to thecurrent ephemeral content item may change in appearance to reflect theamount of time remaining on the timer. In this example, a portion of thestatus bar 150-1 corresponding to the percentage of time elapsed may berepresented in a different color. The portion may grow in size as thetimer runs, until at the predetermined threshold time the portionoccupies substantially all of the status bar 150-1. When the displayedephemeral content subsequently advances, one of the status bars 150 maybe eliminated and the display may be updated (e.g., to resize and/orre-center the remaining status bars 150).

Further optionally, an interaction with the interface 148 may manuallyadvance the displayed ephemeral content (e.g., moving to the nextavailable ephemeral content item). For example, the interface 148 mayregister an interaction such as a tap or swipe, causing the content toadvance.

The system may initially display a most recent ephemeral content itemfor a given sending user in the interface 148. When advancingautomatically or manually, the next ephemeral content item displayed maycorrespond to a next-most-recent ephemeral content item available fromthe same sending user. When the last available ephemeral content itemfor a given sending user is displayed, the system may display the mostrecent ephemeral content item for a next sending user (e.g., thenext-highest ranked user or the user who sent the next-highest-rankedephemeral content item, as determined by the ranking logic describedherein).

The full-screen presentations may also provide an option 152 to reply tothe ephemeral content. In this example, interacting with the option 152may cause a reply interface to be displayed, as shown in FIG. 1I.

In the reply interface, a preview bar 154 may be displayed, showingpreview of the reply as entered (e.g.) through a keyboard or other inputdevice. Optionally, a media element 156 may be presented for replying tothe ephemeral content with media (e.g., a picture, a video, audio, alocation, etc.). When the reply is finalized, a user may interact with afinalize element 158 to transmit the reply.

Other means of replying to the ephemeral content (e.g., by selecting anoption to reply to the ephemeral content in the conversation interface144, or in the ephemeral content interface 106) may also allow a replyto be generated.

According to some embodiments, a reply to a broadcast ephemeral contentmessage may be added as a one-to-one conversation between the originalsender of the ephemeral content message and the recipient generating thereply (even if the ephemeral content originally was transmitted to aselected group or as a broadcast). If no conversation currently existsbetween these users, a new conversation may be generated. Theconversation may rely on an encryption session established when theephemeral content message was transmitted from the sender to therecipient.

For example, FIG. 1J depicts the conversation interface 144 of FIG. 1Gafter the current user has replied to a received ephemeral contentmessage 146. The reply 160 may be added to the ephemeral content message146. In some embodiments, only the original sender of the content andthe replier are able to see the reply 160, even when the ephemeralcontent message 146 was originally shared with a group of recipients (asin the example of FIG. 1G).

Alternatively, the reply 160 may appear as a separate message in thegroup conversation, and may be visible to all members of the group.

The original sender of the ephemeral content and the user that repliedto the ephemeral content may, alternatively or in addition, see theoriginal message 146 and the reply 160 in a separate one-on-oneconversation in a separate conversation interface 144 distinct from thegroup conversation.

As an alternative or in addition to sharing ephemeral content in thecamera interface or through the ephemeral content interface, ephemeralcontent may be shared from within a conversation interface 144, as shownin FIG. 1K. In this example, a selectable element 162 may be provided ina content generation portion of the interface 144. Selecting theselectable element 162 may cause a menu 164 to be displayed, as shown inFIG. 1L. The menu may include a set of menu options 166-i allowingdifferent types of media to be selected or generated.

For instance, a first menu option 166-1 in this example may cause thecamera interface to be displayed. A second menu option 166-2 may openthe user's photo album and/or video library to allow pre-existingcontent to be selected for sharing as ephemeral media. A third option166-3 may open a preview window allowing the user to select a documentfrom local or remote storage for sharing. A fourth option 166-4 mayallow the user to share their location (or a location tag of a selectedlocation). A fifth option 166-5 may allow the user to share a contactfrom their contacts list.

Other options may also or alternatively be offered. For example, aweather option may allow a weather report to be generated or selected asthe content item; a text option may be provided for generating orselecting text; an audio content option may be provided for generatingor selecting audio content; a news content option may be provided forgenerating or selecting a news story; and a hyperlink option may beprovided for generating or selecting a hyperlink, among otherpossibilities.

Selecting one of the options 166-i in the menu 164 may change thedisplay to change to appropriate capture and selection tools. Forexample, if the user selects an audio content option, the display maychange to allow the user to select among stored audio recordings and/orto an audio recording interface. If the user selects the hyperlinkcontent option, the display may be changed to display a list of theuser's stored favorite websites (e.g., retrieved from a web browserapplication), and/or to provide a text entry bar for entering a uniformresource locator (URL). Similarly, if the user selects the locationcontent option, the display may be changed to display a list of storedfavorite locations (e.g., retrieved from a mapping application) and/or asearch bar for entering for a new location.

In some embodiments, the options 166-i may be associated with defaultcontent or actions. For example, selecting the weather option may causea weather report at the current location to be selected as the contentitem. Selecting the location option may cause the user's currentlocation to be loaded into a location tag to be used as the contentitem. Selecting the text option may cause any text currently stored inthe device's clipboard to be selected as the content item.

Optionally, upon selecting or generating ephemeral content, an interfacemay be displayed for adding a caption to the content. After the contentand/or caption are prepared, an ephemeral content message may begenerated and sent, as discussed in more detail below.

Several of the above-described interfaces focus on sharing a photographor video. However, other types of media may also be shared, and eachdifferent type of media may be associated with different types offull-screen presentations. Additional examples of full-screen orenlarged displays of the content are shown in FIGS. 1M-1P for differentmedia types.

FIG. 1M depicts an exemplary interface 168 displaying an enlargedversion of ephemeral content containing an audio recording. Theinterface 168 may include a control 170 for playing or pausing the audiorecording, a location control 172 for controlling the location ofplayback within the recording, and a volume control 174 for controllinga playback volume of the audio recording.

FIG. 1N depicts an exemplary interface 176 displaying an enlargedversion of ephemeral content containing a location. The ephemeralcontent may include a location tag describing a location, and thefull-screen presentation may display a map including or centered on thelocation from the tag. The interface 176 may include a map pin 178showing the precise position of the tagged location on the map.

FIG. 1O depicts an exemplary interface 180 displaying an enlargedversion of ephemeral content containing a weather report. The interfacemay include a large representation 182 of the current weather at thelocation indicated at the time the ephemeral content message wasgenerated, and a small representation 184 of additional details (e.g.,an hourly, daily, or weekly forecast).

FIG. 1P depicts an exemplary interface 186 displaying an enlargedversion of ephemeral content containing a news item. The interface maydisplay a headline 188, an image 190 associated with the news item, andnews content 192.

The full-screen presentations of FIGS. 1H and 1M-1P are intended to beillustrative. Other configurations may be used for the types of mediaitems depicted, and other types of media items may also be associatedwith full-screen presentations.

An exemplary system for distributing ephemeral content messages is nextdescribed with respect to FIG. 2.

Exemplary End-to-End Encryption System

As shown in FIG. 2, exemplary embodiments may provide end-to-endencryption between a sending client 202 and a receiving client 212-ifacilitated by an intermediate server 204. Some embodiments describedherein utilize server-side fan out to transmit group messages andbroadcasts. In a server-side fan out procedure, the sending client 202transmits a single copy of the message to the server 204, which thentransmits a copy of the message to the appropriate recipient clients212-i, as illustrated in FIG. 2.

All communication between clients 202, 212 and servers 204 may belayered within a separate encrypted channel. End-to-end capable clientsmay use, for example, Noise Pipes with Curve25519, Advanced EncryptionStandard Galois/Counter Mode (AES_GCM), and Secure Hash Algorithm 256(SHA256) from the Noise Protocol Framework for long running interactiveconnections. The parameters for setting up the encrypted channel may bestored in a client database 206 at the server 204.

Such a configuration provides several desirable properties, including:fast, lightweight connection and resume; encryption of metadata to hideit from unauthorized network observers; information about the connectinguser's identity is not revealed; and no client authentication secretsare stored on the server 204. Clients may authenticate themselves usinga Curve 25519 key pair, so the server only stores a client's publicauthentication key. If the server's user database 206 is evercompromised, no private authentication credentials will be revealed.

In order to transmit media and/or attachments in an encrypted manner,the communications system may also include a blob server 208 hosting ablob store 210. Use of the blob store 210 to transmit content(particularly in conjunction with sending an ephemeral content message)is described in more detail below.

Exemplary Encryption Protocol and Data Structures

This section describes an exemplary encryption protocol and datastructures suitable for use in end-to-end encryption. Althoughembodiments are illustratively described herein with regards to specificexamples, the present invention is not limited to the examplesdescribed. Some aspects described herein may be used with any type ofcommunications system or encryption protocol, while others may bepreferably employed in connection with an end-to-end encryptedcommunications system.

An example of an encryption protocol suitable for use with exemplaryembodiments is the Signal Protocol designed by Open Whisper Systems ofSan Francisco, Calif. Exemplary embodiments may also utilize theanonymous key agreement protocol Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH).Nonetheless, other encryption protocols and key agreement protocols mayalso be suitable for use with exemplary embodiments.

Advantageously, end-to-end encrypted protocols may prevent third parties(and even the communications service itself) from having plaintextaccess to messages transmitted by the service. Even if encryption keysfrom a user's device are physically compromised, they cannot be used togo back in time to decrypt previously transmitted messages.

In order to use end-to-end encryption, a user may initially registerwith the communications service. The user's registration information maybe stored in the client database 206, as shown in FIG. 3A. Each user maybe associated with an entry 302-i indexed by an identifier assigned tothe user account.

At registration time, an application of the communications serviceassociated with the registering user may transmit a public identity key304, a public signed pre key 306 with its signature, and a batch ofpublic one-time pre keys 310-i to the intermediate server 204.

In one embodiment, the identity key 304 may be a long-term Curve25519key pair, generated at the time that the application is installed on theclient device. The signed pre-key 306 may be a medium-term Curve25519key pair, generated at install time and signed by the identity key. Thesigned pre-key 306 may be rotated on a periodic basis. The one-time prekeys 310-i may be a queue 308 of Curve25519 key pairs for one-time use,generated at install time, and replenished as needed.

The server 204 may store these public keys 304, 306, 310-i associatedwith the user's identifier 302-i. According to exemplary embodiments, atno time does the server 204 have access to any of the client's privatekeys.

In addition to the public keys 304, 306, 310-i, the server 204 may storea contacts list 312 including one or more contact user identifiers 314-iassociated with the contacts of the user account. The contacts in thecontacts list 312 may be, or may be derived from, a contacts list on theuser's mobile device. Some entries in the contacts list 312 may beassociated with one or more flags. One example of such a flag is ablocked-user flag, indicating that the user associated with therespective contact user identifier 314-i is blocked by the user accountassociated with the entry 302-i. When a user account is blocked,messages from the blocked user are not delivered to the blocking user.

In some embodiments, the intermediate server 204 may not store thecontacts list 312, but may instead be capable of querying potentialrecipient clients for their own contacts list in order to provide thefiltering functionality described below.

The information from the client database 206 may be used to initiate anend-to-end encrypted session; using the session information, end-to-endencrypted messages may be exchanged until the session is ended orexpires. Once the session is established, clients do not need to rebuilda new session with each other until the existing session state is lost(e.g., through an external event such as an app reinstall or devicechange). FIG. 3B depicts an exemplary message 316 suitable forestablishing an end-to-end encrypted session.

In order to establish a session, the client initiating the session(“initiator”) may request the public identity key 304, public signed prekey 306, and a single public one-time pre key 310-i for the recipient.

In response, the server 204 may return the requested public key values.A one-time pre key 310-i is only used once, so it is removed from theserver storage after being requested. The initiator may save therecipient's identity key 304 as I_(recipient), the signed pre key 306 asS_(recipient), and the one-time pre key 310-i as O_(recipient).

The initiator may then generate an ephemeral Curve25519 key pair asE_(initiator) 318. The initiator may load its own identity key 304 asI_(initiator) 320. The initiator may calculate a master secret as:

${master\_ secret} = \begin{matrix}{{{ECDH}\left( {I_{initiator},S_{recipient}} \right)}{}{{ECDH}\left( {E_{initiator},I_{recipient}} \right)}{}} \\{{{ECDH}\left( {E_{innitiator},S_{recipient}} \right)}{}{{ECDH}\left( {E_{initiator},O_{recipient}} \right)}}\end{matrix}$

If there is no one-time pre key 310-i (e.g., the keys in the queue 308had been exhausted when the initiator requested such a key and had notbeen replenished by the recipient), then the final ECDH may be omitted.

The initiator may use a Hashed Message Authentication Code (HMAC)-basedkey derivation function (HKDF) to create a root key and chain keys fromthe master secret, as discussed in more detail below. A root key may bea 32-byte value that is used to generate chain keys. A chain key may bea 32-byte value used to create message keys. A message key may be an80-byte value that is used to encrypt message contents. In the messagekey, 32 bytes may be used for an Advanced Encryption Standard-256(AES-256) key, 32 bytes may be used for an HMAC Secure HashAlgorithm-256 (HMAC-SHA256) key, and 16 bytes may be used for aninitialization vector (IV).

After building a long-running encryption session, the initiator mayimmediately start sending messages 316 to the recipient, even if therecipient is offline. Until the recipient responds, the initiator mayinclude the information (in the header of all messages sent) that therecipient requires to build a corresponding session. This includes theinitiator's E_(initiator) 318 and I_(initiator) 320. Optionally themessage may also include a public key 322 and encrypted content 324, asdescribed in connection with FIG. 3C.

When the recipient receives a message 316 that includes session setupinformation, the recipient may calculate the corresponding master secretusing its own private keys and public keys advertised in the header ofthe incoming message. The recipient deletes the one-time pre key 310-iused by the initiator. The initiator may use HKDF to derive acorresponding root key and chain keys from the master secret.

Once a session is established, clients may exchange messages that areprotected with a message key using AES256 in cipher block chaining (CBC)mode for encryption, and HMAC-SHA256 for authentication.

The message key may change for each message transmitted, and isephemeral such that the message key used to encrypt a message cannot bereconstructed from the session state after a message has beentransmitted or received.

The message key may be derived from a sender's chain key that ratchetsforward with every message sent. Additionally, a new ECDH agreement isperformed with each message roundtrip to create a new chain key. Thisprovides forward secrecy through the combination of both an immediatehash ratchet and a round trip Diffie-Hellman (DH) ratchet.

Each time a new message key is needed by a sender, the message key maybe calculated as:

Message Key=HMAC-SHA256(Chain Key,0x01)  Equation 2:

The chain key may then be updated as:

Chain Key=HMAC-SHA256(Chain Key,0x02)  Equation 3:

This causes the chain key to ratchet forward, and also means that astored message key can't be used to derive current or past values of thechain key.

As shown in FIG. 3C, each time a message 326 is transmitted, a publickey 322 (e.g., an ephemeral Curve25519 public key) may be advertisedalong with the encrypted message content 324. Once a response isreceived, a new chain key and root key may be calculated as:

ephemeral_secret=ECDH(Ephemeral_(sender),Ephemeral_(recipient))  Equation4:

Chain Key,Root Key=HKDF(Root Key,ephemeral_secret)  Equation 5:

According to exemplary embodiments, a chain is only ever used to sendmessages from one user, so message keys are not reused. Because of theway message keys and chain keys are calculated, messages can arrivedelayed, out of order, or can be lost entirely without causing problems.

End-to-end encryption may also be used to transmit media and otherattachments, as shown in FIG. 3D. The sending client 202 sending themessage 328 may generate an ephemeral 32 byte AES256 key 336, and anephemeral 32 byte HMAC-SHA256 key 338. The sender may encrypt theattachment 330 with the AES256 key in CBC mode with a random IV, thenappend a message authentication code (MAC) 332 of the ciphertext usingHMAC-SHA256. The sending client 202 may then upload the encryptedattachment 330 as a blob to the blob store 210.

The sending client 202 may then transmit a normal encrypted message 334to a receiving client 212. The message 334 may be secured using a publickey 322, as discussed above. The content 324 of the message 334 mayinclude the encryption key 336, the HMAC key 338, a SHA256 hash of theencrypted blob 340, and a pointer 342 to the blob in the blob store.

The receiving client 212 may decrypt the content 324 and transmit arequest 344 for the blob stored at the location of the pointer 342.After receiving the encrypted blob 346, the receiving client maycalculate a SHA256 hash of the blob and verify that the hash matches thehash 340 of the message 334, may verify the MAC 332, and may decrypt theplaintext.

The above-described procedure for exchanging media may also be used toexchange content in association with an ephemeral content message, asshown in FIG. 3E. As part of the ephemeral content generation process, auser may select media to be shared in connection with the ephemeralcontent message, and use the above-described process to upload the mediato the blob store 210. The sending client 202 may then transmit anephemeral content message 348 to the intermediate server 204 fortransmission to receiving clients 212-i.

An ephemeral content message 348 may include encrypted content 324secured by a public key 322, as described in connection with other typesof messages described above. Optionally, the message 348 may furtherinclude a list of recipients 350. The list of recipients may be a listof recipients selected at the sending client 202. For example, in abroadcast scenario, the sending client 202 may automatically add itsentire contacts list into the list of recipients. In some embodiments,if the server 204 stores the sending client's contacts list, the list ofrecipients 350 may be replaced by a broadcast flag when the sending userdesires to send the message as a broadcast. The server 204 may interpretthe broadcast flag as an instruction to transmit the ephemeral contentmessage to each of the contacts in the contacts list stored by theserver (subject to filtering, as discussed below). If the sending userselects a group of recipients to receive the ephemeral content message,then the list of recipients 350 may include the selected members of thegroup.

In exemplary embodiments employing server-side fan out, the server mayreceive an ephemeral content message 348 as depicted in FIG. 3E and mayuse the list of recipients 350 to determine the candidates to whom themessage may be fanned out. The server may then remove the list ofrecipients 350 from the message, so that recipients do not receive thelist of other users to whom the ephemeral content message was sent.

The encrypted content 324 may include an ephemeral content flag 352designating the content 324 of the message 348 as representing sharedephemeral content. Although ephemeral content may be transmitted in theform of messages in order to preserve end-to-end encryption, thepresence of the ephemeral content flag 352 may indicate to the receivingclient 212 that the message 348 should be processed and displayed as anephemeral content message, rather than a normal message in aconversation.

The content 324 may further include a thumbnail 354. The thumbnail 354may represent a version of the uploaded content that is less detailed,of lower resolution, shows a limited portion of the content, etc.Alternatively or in addition, the thumbnail 354 may be an iconicrepresentation of the content. The iconic representation may bedifferent for different types of content—for example, a contentincluding an audio recording may be represented by an icon displaying amusic note of play button, whereas a location tag may be represented byan icon displaying a map pin or globe. Instead of an iconicrepresentation, the thumbnail 354 may include a flag or description of amedia type, so that an iconic representation stored locally on thereceiving client corresponding to the media type may be selected andused.

The content 324 may further include media message content 356 allowingthe content item corresponding to the thumbnail 354 to be retrieved fromthe blob store 210. For example, the media message content 356 mayinclude the items described above in connection with the media message334 of FIG. 3D, particularly an encryption key 336 and a pointer 342 orlink to the content in the blob store 210.

As noted above, the encryption key 336 is used to encrypt the mediastored in the blog store 210. When sending an ephemeral content message,the sending client 202 may encrypt the media with the encryption key 336and then transmit the encryption key 336 as part of the ephemeralcontent message 348. When the ephemeral content message 348 is fannedout to multiple recipients, each will have a copy of the same encryptionkey 336, and can therefore access the same encrypted blob 346 in theblob store. Thus, multiple copies of the attachment (e.g., one for eachreceiving user) do not need to be individually encrypted and uploaded tothe blob store. Moreover, fewer network messages need to be transmittedfrom the sending client 202, which does not need to transmit separatemessages, one for each encryption key 336 assigned to an individualreceiving client 212.

If the recipients of the ephemeral content change from the perspectiveof the sending client, a new encryption key 336 may be generated for thenew recipient list (even if the shared content item is the same media aswas previously transmitted). In other words, the encryption key 336 isnot re-used to add new recipients to an ephemeral content message or fornew ephemeral content messages with a different recipient list. Thisprivacy model helps to preserve encryption strength and ensures that, ifa user somehow is able to locate a media object from an ephemeralcontent message, that user will not be able to access that media objectunless the user was included in the original transmission thatdistributed the encryption key 336. Thus, access to the media object canbe more effectively secured.

Because the server does not have access to the encryption key 336, whichis itself encrypted in the message 348 in a manner that is only visibleto particular recipient clients, the server is not capable of decryptingthe media uploaded to the blob store 210.

As discussed above, ephemeral content messages (and other types ofmessages) may be fanned out from the server 204 for broadcast or groupmessages. In other words, a client wishing to send a message to a groupof users may transmit a single message to the server 204, which is thendistributed n times to the n different group members (or n differentbroadcast recipients) by the server 204.

Some embodiments may alternatively be used in connection with aclient-side fan out procedure, where a client transmits a single messagen different times to the n different group members or broadcastrecipients. One reason to favor server-side fan out in comparison toclient side fan out is efficiency: in a server side fan out procedure,the client need only transmit a single message to the server, as opposedto the n messages that must be transmitted in a client fan outprocedure. Moreover, server side fan out allows the server 204 toimplement procedures for improving network efficiency and reducingmessaging spam, such as the filtering procedures described herein. Theprocedures described above for developing pairwise encrypted sessionsachieve efficient server-side fan out for most messages sent to groupsor broadcast recipients.

Efficient group messaging may be accomplished using the sender keyscomponent of the Signal Messaging Protocol. More specifically, the firsttime a group member sends a message to a group, the sender may generatea random 32-byte chain key and a random Curve25519 signature key keypair. The sender may combine the 32-byte chain key and the public keyfrom the signature key into a sender key message. The sender mayindividually encrypt the sender key to each member of the group, usingthe pairwise messaging protocol explained above.

For all subsequent messages to the group, the sender may derive amessage key from the chain key, and update the chain key. The sender mayencrypt the message using AES256 in CBC mode, and may sign theciphertext using the signature key. The sender may transmit the singleciphertext message to the server, which performs server-side fan out toall group recipients. The has ratchet of the message sender's chain keyprovides forward secrecy. Whenever a group member leaves, all groupparticipants clear their sender key and start over.

One advantage of server side fan out is that the server 204 may performfiltering on the received ephemeral content messages in order to reducespam. For example, the server 204 may receive a broadcast ephemeralcontent message from a sending client 202, and may forward the ephemeralcontent message only to those user accounts that have a symmetricrelationship with the user account associated with the sending client202. An example of relationship symmetry is shown in FIG. 3F.

FIG. 3F depicts the contacts list 312-i of various users. Each contactslist 312-i includes one or more contacts 314-i. In this example, thecontacts list 312-1 for a first user includes user identifiers 314-2,314-3 for a second user and a third user. The identifier 314-4 for afourth user is not present in the first user's contacts list 312-1.

The second user's contacts list 312-2 includes the first user'sidentifier 314-1. Because the first user's contacts list 312-1 includesthe second user's ID 314-2-, and because the second user's contacts list312-2 includes the first user's ID 314-1, the first user and the seconduser are said to have a symmetric relationship. Such a relationshipmight occur, for example, if the first user and second user both haveeach other listed in the contacts list of their mobile devices.

The third user's contacts list 312-3 includes the second user's ID 314-2and the fourth user's ID 314-4, but does not include the first user's ID314-1. Because the first user's contacts list 312-1 includes the thirduser's ID 314-3, but the third user's contacts list 312-3 does notinclude the first user's ID 314-1, the relationship between the firstuser and the third user is said to be asymmetric. Such a condition,where the sending user's contacts list includes a potential recipientbut the recipient's contacts list does not include the sending user, isreferred to herein as forward asymmetry.

The fourth user's contacts list 312-4 includes the first user's ID314-1, the second user's ID 314-2, and the third user's ID 314-3.Because the fourth user's contacts list 312-4 includes the first user'sID 314-1 but the first user's contacts list 312-1 does not include thefourth user's ID 314-4, the relationship between the first user and thefourth user is also asymmetric. Such a condition, where the sendinguser's contacts list does not include a potential recipient but therecipient's contacts list does include the sending user, is referred toherein as reverse asymmetry.

According to exemplary embodiments, when the server 204 receives anephemeral content message (or any type of message) to be broadcast (ortransmitted to a group) by a sending client 202, the server 204 mayretrieve the sending user's contacts list and may use this list as aninitial candidate list of potential recipients of the broadcast. Foreach user ID in the candidate list, those user's contacts lists may beretrieved and reviewed to determine if the sending user is present inthe recipients' contact lists. If the relationship between the senderand potential recipient is symmetric, the recipients may remain in thecandidate list. If the relationship is asymmetric (e.g., the potentialrecipient's contacts list does not include the sending user), then thepotential recipient may be filtered out of the candidate list. Such aprocedure may help to reduce spam—for example, this filtering wouldprevent a spammer from adding unauthorized recipients to their owncontacts list and then broadcasting a message to those recipients.

The decision as to who receives the ephemeral content message may bemade at the time the ephemeral content message is transmitted.Accordingly, if a relationship becomes symmetric after the ephemeralcontent message is transmitted, recipients who were originally filteredout will not receive the ephemeral content message. For instance, in theexample depicted in FIG. 3F, if the third user adds the first user's ID314-1 to his contacts list 312-3 after the first user sends an ephemeralcontent message (thereby making the relationship between the first userand the third user symmetric), the ephemeral content message is not sentto the third user after the relationship becomes symmetric. Similarly,if the first user adds the fourth user's ID 314-4 to the first user'scontacts list 312-1 after the first user sends an ephemeral contentmessage, the ephemeral content message is not sent to the fourth userafter the relationship becomes symmetric. In both cases, futureephemeral content messages transmitted by the first user become visibleto the third user and the fourth user due to the now-symmetric nature ofthe relationships.

However, in some embodiments recipients who were originally filtered outof the candidate list due to forward asymmetry may receive a previousephemeral content message if the relationship later becomes symmetric.Changing a reverse asymmetric relationship to a symmetric relationshipmay not result in such a new transmission. Such embodiments help topreserve the privacy of the sending user. In the case of forwardasymmetry, the sending user had an opportunity to consider which userswould receive the ephemeral content message broadcast. Because theasymmetry was in the forward direction, the first user was at leastaware that the asymmetric recipient could have received the ephemeralcontent message (by virtue of the recipient being in the first user'scontacts list 312-1).

On the other hand, in the case of reverse asymmetry, the first user didnot include the potential recipient in the first user's contacts list312-1, and so did not consider that the ephemeral content messagebroadcast may have been sent to the recipient. Therefore, when theasymmetric relationship is later made symmetric, the new recipientshould not automatically receive prior ephemeral content messages. Ifthe first user wishes the new recipient to receive previous ephemeralcontent messages, then the user may be presented with an option toforward all, some, or individual ephemeral content messages to therecipient.

In still further embodiments, establishing symmetry with another usermay cause previous ephemeral content messages to become visible to theother user, regardless of whether the original asymmetry was forward orreverse.

This and other aspects of exemplary embodiments are next described inconnection with the data flow diagram depicted in FIG. 4.

Exemplary Information Exchange

FIG. 4 is an exemplary data flow diagram showing information exchangebetween a sending client, an intermediate server, a blob server, areceiving client, and a third client according to an exemplaryembodiment.

The sending client may send one or more account creation messages 402when initially creating an account with the communications service. Theaccount creation messages 402 may be sent as a result of joining theservice and installing an application of the service for the first time.Additional similar messages may be transmitted when the user first logsin to a new device, updates their hardware or software, etc. The accountcreation messages 402 may include automatically generated informationand/or information from the user of the sending client. The accountcreation messages 402 may be used to populate the server's clientdatabase 206.

Similarly, the receiving client may create an account with thecommunications service, and may accordingly transmit account creationmessages 404 to the intermediate server.

When the sending client wishes to communicate with the receiving client,the sending client sends a session creation request 406 to theintermediate server to request the receiving client's public keys, asdescribed above. The server responds with session data 408 (e.g.,including the recipient's public identity key, signed pre key, andone-time pre key).

This procedure (exchanging session creation messages 406 and sessiondata messages 408 with the server) may be performed for eachsender-recipient pair. It may be performed when the sender firstcontacts the recipient (or contacts the recipient for the first timeafter a session has previously expired). It may also be performed whenthe sender sends a broadcast message, such as a broadcast ephemeralcontent message, for each recipient in the sender's address book withwhom the sender has a symmetric relationship and for whom an encryptedsession has not been previously established.

When the sending client wishes to send an ephemeral content messageincluding content such as media 410, the sending client may upload themedia 410 to the blob server as discussed above in connection with FIG.3D. The sending client may then send an ephemeral content message 412 tothe server. The server may perform filtering, as described herein, anddetermine which recipient's in the sending user's contacts list willreceive the ephemeral content message 412. The server may then sendrespective ephemeral content messages 414 to each recipient in thefiltered list.

As noted above, the ephemeral content message may include a thumbnailand a link to the media in the blob store. Upon activating the link(e.g., by clicking or interacting with a representation of thethumbnail), the receiving client may generate a media request 416 torequest the media from the blob store. The blob store may respond to themedia request with a media response 420, as described above inconnection with FIG. 3D. Thus, the media may be downloaded to thereceiving client.

In some embodiments, the link may be ephemeral. For example, the linkmay be valid for a predetermined period of time (e.g., 24 hours) or fora predetermined number of views (e.g., one use, two uses, etc.). Assuch, the receiving client may be configured to retrieve the media fromthe blob server, but to delete the media after presenting thefull-screen display. In some embodiments, such as when the link expiresafter a predetermined period of time, the receiving client may beconfigured to delete the media from local storage after thepredetermined period of time and to simultaneously mark the link asinactive so that the link cannot be used to retrieve the media again. Inother embodiments, such as when the link expires after a predeterminednumber of views, the receiving client may be configured to delete themedia from local storage after the full-screen view has been presentedthe predetermined number of times, and to simultaneously mark the linkinactive so that the link cannot be used to retrieve the media again. Instill further embodiments, the receiving client may be configured tostore the retrieved media in temporary storage and delete the media eachtime after the full-screen view is presented. In such embodiments, thelink may remain active for a certain period (e.g., for a predeterminednumber of views or for a predetermined amount of time), and may be usedto retrieve the media over this period. The link may be made inactiveafter the period is up, after which point the link may not be used toretrieve the media from the blob store.

By storing the media remotely at the blob store and providing a link tothe media, which may be made inactive under certain conditions, themedia can remain in storage even after some or all of the links begin toexpire. For example, if the links are configured to expire after oneview, different receiving users may view the full screen presentationsat different times. The media can remain on the blob server (e.g., untilall the links have expired) while users with inactive links may simplybe unable to reach the media. Meanwhile, users with active links maycontinue to be able to access the media via the blob store until theirlinks expire.

As noted above, users may reply to ephemeral content messages. Forexample, the receiving client may submit a reply 422 to the intermediateserver. The intermediate server may assign the reply to an appropriateconversation or thread (where a conversation may be uniquely defined byits participants). To this end, the intermediate server may associatethe reply with (e.g.) a thread or conversation identifier. Havingassigned the reply to a conversation, the server may transmit the reply424 (at least) to the sending user.

According to exemplary embodiments, a reply by a receiving user to asending user's ephemeral content message may be assigned to a one-to-oneconversation between the sending user and the receiving user when theoriginal ephemeral content message was transmitted as a broadcast. Ifthe ephemeral content message was transmitted to a group, then repliesmay be sent on a one-to-one basis, or may be assigned to a conversationassociated with the group. When assigning the reply to a groupconversation, the server may verify that pairwise encrypted sessionsexist between each pair or members of the group. If such sessions do notexist, the reply may be sent into a one-on-one conversation between thereceiving user and the sender.

After transmitting the ephemeral content message 412, the sending usermay add a new contact (in this case, a third user) to the sending user'scontacts list. Accordingly, the sending user may transmit a new contactmessage 426 to the server. As shown in the example of FIG. 4, adding thenew user to the sending user's contacts list does not cause acorresponding ephemeral content message to be sent to the third userclient, even if the third user had previously included the sending userin the third user's contacts list (reverse asymmetry). The ephemeralcontent message remains unavailable to the third user client.

Similarly, the third user may add a new contact (in this case, thesending client) to the third user's contacts list. Accordingly, a newcontact message 428 may be transmitted to the server. Again, adding thenew user to the third user's contacts list does not cause acorresponding ephemeral content message to be sent to the third user,even if the sending user had previously included the third user in thesending user's contacts list (forward asymmetry).

Optionally, if the sending user had included the third user in thesending user's contacts list at the time the ephemeral content message412 was broadcast, then later establishing a symmetric relationship (dueto the new contact message 428) may cause the ephemeral content message412 to be sent to the third user client or otherwise be made availableto the third user client.

Exemplary Logic

Exemplary logic for implementing the above-described embodiments is nextdescribed in connection with FIGS. 5A-7C. The exemplary logic may beimplemented in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware andsoftware (e.g., being implemented at least partially in hardware).

FIG. 5A is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic 500 performed by asystem, such as a sending client, for generating an ephemeral contentmessage in a communications service.

At block 502, the system may perform initial account setup. The initialaccount setup may populate the client database of an intermediate serverof the communications service with information used to establishencrypted sessions, such as the information described in connection withFIG. 3A.

The steps of block 502 may be performed when the user initiallyregisters with the communication service, and/or when the user signs into a new device, installs software of the communication service on a newdevice, updates existing software or hardware, etc.

At block 504, the system may optionally initiate an encryptedcommunications session with one or more other users. The system maytransmit messages and perform operations similar to those described inconnection with FIG. 3B The steps of block 504 may be performed when theuser attempts to communicate with a user with whom no encrypted sessioncurrently exists, when the user updates their communications software,when the user

At block 506, the system may enter into the ephemeral content messagefunctionality of the communications service. An example of ephemeralcontent message entry is described in more detail in connection withFIG. 5B. As part of the ephemeral content message entry, content may beselected for the ephemeral content message, and an ephemeral contentmessage may be generated.

At block 508, the system may optionally receive a selection of a groupof recipients for the ephemeral content message. An interface may bepresented allowing the user to select recipients from among the contactslist on the sending client. The list of selected recipients may beloaded into the ephemeral content message generated at block 514. Ifspecific recipients are not selected, the ephemeral content message maybe flagged for transmission to each member of the contacts list on thesending client. The contacts list may be loaded into the ephemeralcontent message generated at block 514.

At block 510, the system may optionally initiate encryptedcommunications sessions with any potential recipients identified atblock 508, for whom a session was not previously initiated at block 504.

At block 512, the system may encrypt the content selected at block 506and upload the encrypted content to a media server. To this end, thesystem may generate messages and perform operations similar to thosedescribed in connection with FIG. 3D.

At block 514, the system may generate a message including the ephemeralcontent. The contents may include an ephemeral content flag indicatingthat the message is an ephemeral content message. The contents may beencrypted, as previously described, and packaged with a public key fordecrypting the message and the list of recipients generated at block508.

At block 516, the system may transmit the message generated at block 514to an intermediate server. The server may receive the message, removethe recipient list, and fan out the message to the recipients in thelist.

At block 518, the system may receive a reply to the ephemeral contentmessage from a server. The reply may be associated with a conversationID and one or more participants. At block 520, the system may eitheridentify a preexisting conversation associated with the conversation ID,or may generate a new conversation having the conversation ID andincluding the one or more participants. The original ephemeral contentmessage may be included as a message in the conversation, and the replyreceived at block 518 may be added to the conversation. Processing maythen terminate.

FIG. 5B is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic 550 performed by asystem, such as a sending client, for processing a request to enter intoa content sharing interface.

At block 552, the system may present an interface to a communicationsapplication, such as the interface depicted in FIG. 1A. The interfacemay include an ephemeral content icon for displaying an ephemeralcontent interface. At block 554, the system may receive an instructionto access the ephemeral content interface, such as by registering aninteraction with the ephemeral content icon.

In response to receiving the instruction at block 554, at block 556 thesystem may display the ephemeral content interface, such as theinterface depicted in FIG. 1B, and may receive a selection of anephemeral content interactable element in the interface.

At block 558, the system may present a content selection/generationinterface in response to receiving the content sharing selection. Thecontent selection/generation interface may present one or more optionsfor selecting preexisting content to be shared, or for generating newcontent. Examples of such an interfaces are depicted in FIGS. 1C and 1L.

At block 560, the system may receive content for sharing through thecontent interface. The content may be selected in the interface, or maybe generated through the interface. Processing may then terminate.

FIG. 6A is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic 600 performed by asystem, such as an intermediate server, for processing a transmission ofan ephemeral content message.

At block 602, the system may receive an account setup request from aclient, and may perform account setup in block 604. The system mayreceive a request to initiate an encryption session in block 606, andmay initiate the encryption session at block 608. These blocks generallycorrespond to the client-side steps described in connection with blocks502-504 of FIG. 5A, and further discussion is omitted here for the sakeof brevity.

At block 610, the system may receive an ephemeral content message from asending client. The ephemeral content message may be received as amessage, and may in some embodiments be indistinguishable from other(non-ephemeral-content) messages received from the sending client. Inother embodiments, the message may be flagged as including ephemeralcontent in a portion of the message that is accessible to the server,and the server may identify the message as an ephemeral content messageand perform designated ephemeral-content-specific processing.

At block 612, the system may retrieve a recipient list from the message.If no recipient list is present (e.g., a predetermined locationdesignated for the recipient list in the message is blank), then thesystem may assume that the message is intended to be a broadcast fromthe sending user to each of the contacts in the sending user's contactslist.

At block 614, the system may filter the contacts list to reduce unwantedmessages. Block 614 is described in more detail in connection with FIG.6B.

At block 616, the system may fan out the original message to therecipients in the filtered list. The transmitted messages may omit therecipient list identified in block 612, but may otherwise include thecontent and the decryption keys included in the original message.

At block 618, the system may receive a reply to the ephemeral contentmessage from one or more of the recipients to whom the message wastransmitted in block 616. Depending on whether the original message wastransmitted as a group message or a broadcast, the system may assign thereplies to different types of conversations. Therefore, at block 620,the system may determine whether the original ephemeral content messagewas a broadcast or group message. If the original message did notspecify recipients, or specified all the recipients in the sendinguser's contacts list, or was otherwise flagged as a broadcast message,then the system may determine that the original ephemeral contentmessage was transmitted as part of a broadcast. On the other hand, ifthe original message specified a limited number of recipients less thanthe entire contacts list of the sender, or specified a conversation IDfor a group conversation to identify recipients, or was otherwiseflagged as a group message, then the system may determine that theoriginal ephemeral content message was transmitted as part of a groupmessage.

If the ephemeral content message was transmitted as a broadcast, then atblock 622 the system may assign the reply to a one-to-one conversationbetween the original sender and the replying recipient. The system maymaintain a list of active conversations involving each user, and mayexamine the list to determine if a one-to-one conversation alreadyexists between these two users. If so, the conversation ID of theexisting conversation may be retrieved, and the reply may be associatedwith the conversation ID (the original ephemeral content message mayalso be associated with the conversation ID). If not, a new conversationID may be generated and associated with the two users. The reply and theoriginal message may be associated with the new conversation ID.

If the original ephemeral content message was transmitted as a groupmessage, then at block 624 the system may verify that each pair of usersin the group is associated with an encrypted session. This block may beused to ensure the security of group messages. Although it is likelythat pairwise encrypted sessions exist between the original sender ofthe ephemeral content and each of the recipients of the ephemeralcontent (performed at blocks 504 and/or 510 of FIG. 5A), it cannotnecessarily be assumed that the recipients have pairwise encryptedsessions with each other. If necessary, the system may initiateencrypted sessions between any pairs of recipients that do not havepairwise encrypted sessions.

Processing may then proceed to block 626, where the system assigns thereply to a group conversation. The system may examine theabove-described conversation list to determine if a group conversationalready exists between these sender and recipients. If so, theconversation ID of the existing conversation may be retrieved, and thereply may be associated with the conversation ID (the original ephemeralcontent message may also be associated with the conversation ID). Ifnot, a new conversation ID may be generated and associated with theparticipants. The reply and the original message may be associated withthe new conversation ID.

At block 628, the system may transmit the reply as part of theconversation identified in block 622 or block 626. Processing may thenterminate.

FIG. 6B is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic 650 performed by asystem, such as an intermediate server, for filtering a list of contactsupon receipt of an ephemeral content message. The ephemeral contentmessage may be transmitted as a broadcast, or to a group of specifiedrecipients.

At block 652, the system may access a list of intended recipients of theephemeral content message. In the case of a broadcast, the initial listof intended recipients may be the contacts list of the sending user. Inthe case of a group of specified recipients (e.g., the participants in aconversation, a selected group, etc.), the sending client may specifythe recipients by providing a list, by providing a conversation orthread ID (from which the participants in the conversation may bederived), or by some other means. In some embodiments, the sendingclient may also specify the group of recipients in the event of abroadcast. In either case, the sending client may append a list ofintended recipients to the ephemeral content message.

At block 654, the system may determine if any further potentialrecipients remain to be processed. If not, then processing may proceedto block 565 and the system may return the filtered recipient list asthe final list of recipients of the message.

If the system determines, at block 654, that more potential recipientsremain to be processed, then processing may proceed to block 658 and thenext potential recipient in the sending user's contacts list may beselected for review.

At block 660, the system may determine whether the selected intendedrecipient has been blocked by the sender. For example, the system mayaccess the sending user's contacts list and determine whether an entryassociated with the selected intended recipient is associated with ablocked flag. If so (i.e., the selected intended recipient is blocked bythe sender), then processing may proceed to block 662 and the selectedintended recipient may be removed from the list of recipients to whomthe message will be sent. Processing may then return to block 654 andthe system may determine whether additional potential recipients remainfor evaluation.

If not (i.e., the selected intended recipient is not blocked by thesender), then processing may proceed to block 664.

At block 664, the system may access the selected intended recipient'scontacts list. For example, the system may access the client database206 and perform a lookup based on the selected intended recipient's userID. The system may access the contacts list 312 associated with theselected intended recipient and search the contact UIDs 314-i thereinfor the sending user.

At block 666, the system may determine whether the sender is in thecontacts list associated with the selected intended recipient. If not,then processing may proceed to block 662 and the selected intendedrecipient may be filtered out of the list of recipients (due to reverseasymmetry).

If so (i.e., the sending user was found in the selected intendedrecipient's contacts list), then processing may proceed to block 668. Atblock 668, the system may determine whether the sender has been blockedby the intended recipient. For example, the system may determine whetherthe contact entry associated with the sending user in the intendedrecipient's contacts list (as retrieved in block 666) is associated witha blocked flag. If so, processing may proceed to block 662 and theselected intended recipient may be filtered out of the list ofrecipients.

If not, processing may proceed to block 670 and the selected intendedrecipient may be included in the list of recipients of the ephemeralcontent message. Processing may then return to block 654 and the systemmay determine whether additional potential recipients remain forevaluation.

FIG. 7A is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic 700 performed by asystem, such as a receiving client, for displaying an ephemeral contentmessage.

At block 702, the system may perform initial setup with thecommunications service, and at block 704 may initiate an encryptionsession. These blocks generally correspond to the client-side stepsdescribed in connection with blocks 502-504 of FIG. 5A, and furtherdiscussion is omitted here for the sake of brevity.

At block 706, the system may receive an encrypted message in the sessioninitiated in block 704. At block 708, the system may parse the messageto retrieve a public key, and at block 710 may calculate its own privatekey. At block 712, the system may decrypt the message using the publicand private keys. The general procedure for decrypting messages has beendescribed above in connection with FIGS. 3A-3E.

At block 714, the system may determine whether an ephemeral content flagis present in, or associated with, the decrypted message. If not, thenprocessing may proceed to block 716 and the decrypted content may bedisplayed as a normal message in a conversation. If so, then processingmay proceed to block 718.

At block 718, the system may process the message as an ephemeral contentmessage. The system may parse the content of the message to retrieve athumbnail of media (or an indicator designating a locally-storedthumbnail to be used) and a link to the media stored on the blob store.

The system may determine a rank of the ephemeral content message atblock 720 so that the ephemeral content message may be displayed in theranked order. Block 720 is described in more detail in connection withFIG. 7B.

At block 722, the system may display the thumbnail in one or moreephemeral content tabs or portions of an interface dedicated toephemeral content messages. An example of such an interface is describedin connection with FIGS. 1B and 1D. As part of the processing performedat block 720, the system may calculate an interest score associated withthe ephemeral content message. Recent ephemeral content messages (e.g.,within a predetermined period of time) and/or a predetermined number ofephemeral content messages may be displayed in a ranked order based onthe interest score.

At block 724, the system may receive a selection of the thumbnail. Theselection may be received in the portion of the interface dedicated toephemeral content message, in a message in a conversation, etc.

At block 726, the system may determine if the link is currently active.For example, the link may be set as inactive after a predeterminedamount of time, or after the content has been viewed a predeterminednumber of times. The conditions under which the link becomes in activemay be specified as part of the link or otherwise in the ephemeralcontent message. If no conditions are specified, the system may applydefault conditions, or the link may be set to remain permanently active.

If the link is not currently active at block 726, then at block 728 thesystem may refrain from displaying the content. If the link is active atblock 726, then processing may proceed to block 730.

At block 730, the system may retrieve the content using the link anddecrypt the content. The procedure for retrieving and decrypting thecontent has been described above in connection with FIG. 3D.

At block 732, the system may display a full-screen or enlargedrepresentation of the content item. Examples of interfaces fordisplaying a full-screen or enlarged representation of the content itemare described in connection with FIGS. 1E-1I.

At block 734, the system may optionally mark the link as inactive upondisplaying the full-screen notification. This may be used, for example,in the case where the ephemerality model for the content is such thatthe content is only able to be viewed once, or in order to force thereceiving client to redownload the content each time that the content isrequested, so that the content does not remain on the local devicebetween times when the content is accessed.

At block 736, the system may receive a reply to the ephemeral contentmessage. For example, the user may select a reply option in thefull-screen presentation, reply to a message including the ephemeralcontent message, etc. At block 738, the system may transmit the reply tothe server. Processing may then terminate.

FIG. 7B is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic 750 performed by asystem, such as a sending client, for ranking ephemeral contentmessages.

At block 752, the system may receive an instruction to display ephemeralcontent messages. For example, when loading an interface of acommunication application, one or more portions of the interface may bededicated to displaying ephemeral content messages. Recent ephemeralcontent messages accessible to the local user may be stored in a queueon the local device or the server. When loading the portion(s) of theinterface, the system may instruct the ranking logic 750 to rank thequeued ephemeral content messages.

The system may set up an output queue or list of user IDs associatedwith ephemeral content messages. UIDs may be placed into the outputqueue or list in the order in which they are ranked. The output queue orlist may be initially empty and UIDs associated with ephemeral contentmessages may be added to the list as the ephemeral content messages areevaluated.

At block 754, the system may determine whether additional ephemeralcontent messages remain to be ranked. For example, the system mayreceive a list of recent ephemeral content messages transmitted to thereceiving client by the server. The list may include each ephemeralcontent message transmitted to the receiving client within apredetermined amount of time, or may include a predetermined number ofephemeral content messages, etc. At block 754, the system may determinewhether all of the ephemeral content messages on the list have beenevaluated.

If not, then at block 756, the system may rank the ephemeral contentmessages based on calculated interest scores (as described below), ifthe system has not been performing rankings as each ephemeral contentmessage is evaluated. The ranked ephemeral content messages may be addedto the output queue or list in the ranked order. At block 758, thesystem may return the ranked results.

If there are ephemeral content messages remain for evaluation at block754, then processing may proceed to block 760. At block 760, the systemmay retrieve the next ephemeral content message to be evaluated (e.g.,from the server, or a local input queue).

At block 762, the system may determine a regency of the ephemeralcontent message under evaluation. The ephemeral content message may beassociated with a time stamp, and the system may determine an amount oftime that has elapsed since the timestamp. A recency score may becalculated based on the amount of elapsed time.

At block 764, the system may identify a sender of the ephemeral contentmessage. The sender may be identified in connection with the ephemeralcontent message. The system may maintain viewership metrics associatedwith each of the contacts in a contacts list on the system, and themetrics corresponding to the sender may be retrieved at block 764.

At block 766, the system may evaluate the viewership metrics associatedwith the sender. For example, at block 768 the system may determinewhether the current user has recently (e.g., within a predeterminedamount of time) reviewed an ephemeral content message from the sender.The system may calculate a recent review score based on the mostrecently-reviewed ephemeral content message.

At block 770, the system may determine a percentage or proportion ofrecent (or all-time) ephemeral content messages from the sender that thecurrent user has reviewed. The system may calculate a percentagereviewed score based on the percentage or proportion.

At block 772, the system may determine whether the current user hasregularly reviewed ephemeral content messages from the sender. Forexample, the system may determine how often the user reviews thesender's ephemeral content messages as a function of frequency over aperiod of time. Based on the regularity of the review, a regular reviewscore may be calculated.

At block 774, the system may calculate an interest score based on themetrics evaluated at blocks 762 and 766. The metrics may be weighted andaccumulated to arrive at the interest score. The weightings may varybased on the application.

Processing may then return to block 754, and the system may determinewhether additional ephemeral content messages remain to be evaluated.

Communications System Overview

These examples may be implemented by a communications system that isprovided locally, at a client device, or remotely (e.g., at a remoteserver), or some combination thereof. FIGS. 8A-8C depict variousexamples of communications systems, and are discussed in more detailbelow.

FIG. 8A depicts an exemplary centralized communications system 800,which facilitates encrypted communication between two or more users. Thecentralized system 800 may implement some or all of the structure and/oroperations of a messaging or communications service in a singlecomputing entity, such as entirely within a single centralized serverdevice 826.

The communications system 800 may include a computer-implemented systemhaving software applications that include one or more components.Although the communications system 800 shown in FIG. 8A has a limitednumber of elements in a certain topology, the communications system 800may include more or fewer elements in alternate topologies.

A communications service 800 may be generally arranged to receive,store, and deliver communications, such as messages. The communicationsmay include or may be associated with media or content items.

A client device 810 may transmit communications addressed to one or morerecipient users, user accounts, or other identifiers resolving toreceiving client devices 810. In exemplary embodiments, each of theclient devices 810 and their respective clients 820 are associated witha particular user or users of the communications service 800. In someembodiments, the client devices 810 may be cellular devices such assmartphones and may be identified to the communications service 800based on a phone number associated with each of the client devices 810.In some embodiments, each client may be associated with a user accountregistered with the communications service 800. In general, each clientmay be addressed through various techniques for the reception ofcommunications. While in some embodiments the client devices 810 may becellular devices, in other embodiments one or more of the client devices810 may be personal computers, tablet devices, any other form ofcomputing device.

The client 810 may include one or more input devices 812 and one or moreoutput devices 818. The input devices 812 may include, for example,microphones, keyboards, cameras, electronic pens, touch screens, andother devices for receiving inputs including message data, requests,commands, user interface interactions, selections, and other types ofinput. The output devices 818 may include a speaker, a display devicesuch as a monitor or touch screen, and other devices for presenting aninterface to the communications system 800.

The client 810 may include a memory, which may be a non-transitorycomputer readable storage medium, such as one or a combination of a harddrive, solid state drive, flash storage, read only memory, or randomaccess memory. The memory may a representation of an input 814 and/or arepresentation of an output 816, as well as one or more applications.For example, the memory may store a messaging client 820 and/or a socialnetworking client that allows a user to interact with a socialnetworking service.

The input 814 may be textual, such as in the case where the input device812 is a keyboard. Alternatively, the input 814 may be an audio or videorecording, such as in the case where the input device 812 is amicrophone or camera.

The input 814 may be subjected to automatic speech recognition (ASR)logic in order to transform the audio recording to text that isprocessable by the messaging system 800. The ASR logic may be located atthe client device 810 (so that the audio recording is processed locallyby the client 810 and corresponding text is transmitted to thecommunications server 826), or may be located remotely at thecommunications server 826 (in which case, the audio recording may betransmitted to the communications server 826 and the communicationsserver 826 may process the audio into text). Other combinations are alsopossible—for example, if the input device 812 is a touch pad orelectronic pen, the input 814 may be in the form of handwriting, whichmay be subjected to handwriting or optical character recognitionanalysis logic in order to transform the input 812 into processabletext.

The client 810 may be provided with a network interface 822 forcommunicating with a network 824, such as the Internet. The networkinterface 822 may transmit the input 812 in a format and/or using aprotocol compatible with the network 824 and may receive a correspondingoutput 816 from the network 824.

The network interface 822 may communicate through the network 824 to acommunications server 826. The messaging server 826 may be operative toreceive, store, and forward messages between messaging clients.

The communications server 826 may include a network interface 822,communications preferences 828, and communications logic 830. Thecommunications preferences 828 may include one or more privacy settingsfor one or more users and/or video communications. For example, thecommunications preferences 828 may include one or more settings,including default settings, for the logic described herein.

The communications logic 830 may include ephemeral content logic 832 forgenerating, processing, and/or displaying ephemeral content messages, asdescribed above (the ephemeral content logic 832 may also oralternatively be provided on the clients 810).

The network interface 822 of the client 810 and/or the communicationsserver 826 may also be used to communicate through the network 824 witha social networking server 836. The social networking server 836 mayinclude or may interact with a social networking graph 838 that definesconnections in a social network. Furthermore, the communications server826 may connect to the social networking server 836 for variouspurposes, such as retrieving connection information, messaging history,event details, etc. from the social network.

A user of the client 810 may be an individual (human user), an entity(e.g., an enterprise, business, or third-party application), or a group(e.g., of individuals or entities) that interacts or communicates withor over the social networking server 836. The social-networking server836 may be a network-addressable computing system hosting an onlinesocial network. The social networking server 836 may generate, store,receive, and send social-networking data, such as, for example,user-profile data, concept-profile data, social-graph information, orother suitable data related to the online social network. The socialnetworking server 836 may be accessed by the other components of thenetwork environment either directly or via the network 824.

The social networking server 836 may include an authorization server (orother suitable component(s)) that allows users to opt in to or opt outof having their actions logged by social-networking server 836 or sharedwith other systems (e.g., third-party systems, such as the messagingserver 826), for example, by setting appropriate privacy settings. Aprivacy setting of a user may determine what information associated withthe user may be logged, how information associated with the user may belogged, when information associated with the user may be logged, who maylog information associated with the user, whom information associatedwith the user may be shared with, and for what purposes informationassociated with the user may be logged or shared. Authorization serversmay be used to enforce one or more privacy settings of the users ofsocial-networking server 836 through blocking, data hashing,anonymization, or other suitable techniques as appropriate.

More specifically, one or more of the content objects of the onlinesocial network may be associated with a privacy setting. The privacysettings (or “access settings”) for an object may be stored in anysuitable manner, such as, for example, in association with the object,in an index on an authorization server, in another suitable manner, orany combination thereof. A privacy setting of an object may specify howthe object (or particular information associated with an object) can beaccessed (e.g., viewed or shared) using the online social network. Wherethe privacy settings for an object allow a particular user to accessthat object, the object may be described as being “visible” with respectto that user. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user of theonline social network may specify privacy settings for a user-profilepage identify a set of users that may access the work experienceinformation on the user-profile page, thus excluding other users fromaccessing the information. In particular embodiments, the privacysettings may specify a “blocked list” of users that should not beallowed to access certain information associated with the object. Inother words, the blocked list may specify one or more users or entitiesfor which an object is not visible. As an example and not by way oflimitation, a user may specify a set of users that may not access photosalbums associated with the user, thus excluding those users fromaccessing the photo albums (while also possibly allowing certain usersnot within the set of users to access the photo albums).

In particular embodiments, privacy settings may be associated withparticular elements of the social networking graph 838. Privacy settingsof a social-graph element, such as a node or an edge, may specify howthe social-graph element, information associated with the social-graphelement, or content objects associated with the social-graph element canbe accessed using the online social network. As an example and not byway of limitation, a particular concept node corresponding to aparticular photo may have a privacy setting specifying that the photomay only be accessed by users tagged in the photo and their friends. Inparticular embodiments, privacy settings may allow users to opt in oropt out of having their actions logged by social networking server 836or shared with other systems. In particular embodiments, the privacysettings associated with an object may specify any suitable granularityof permitted access or denial of access. As an example and not by way oflimitation, access or denial of access may be specified for particularusers (e.g., only me, my roommates, and my boss), users within aparticular degrees-of-separation (e.g., friends, or friends-of-friends),user groups (e.g., the gaming club, my family), user networks (e.g.,employees of particular employers, students or alumni of particularuniversity), all users (“public”), no users (“private”), users ofthird-party systems, particular applications (e.g., third-partyapplications, external websites), other suitable users or entities, orany combination thereof. Although this disclosure describes usingparticular privacy settings in a particular manner, this disclosurecontemplates using any suitable privacy settings in any suitable manner.

In response to a request from a user (or other entity) for a particularobject stored in a data store, the social networking server 836 may senda request to the data store for the object. The request may identify theuser associated with the request. The requested data object may only besent to the user (or a client system 810 of the user) if theauthorization server determines that the user is authorized to accessthe object based on the privacy settings associated with the object. Ifthe requesting user is not authorized to access the object, theauthorization server may prevent the requested object from beingretrieved from the data store, or may prevent the requested object frombe sent to the user. In the search query context, an object may only begenerated as a search result if the querying user is authorized toaccess the object. In other words, the object must have a visibilitythat is visible to the querying user. If the object has a visibilitythat is not visible to the user, the object may be excluded from thesearch results.

In some embodiments, targeting criteria may be used to identify users ofthe social network for various purposes. Targeting criteria used toidentify and target users may include explicit, stated user interests onsocial-networking server 836 or explicit connections of a user to anode, object, entity, brand, or page on social networking server 836. Inaddition, or as an alternative, such targeting criteria may includeimplicit or inferred user interests or connections (which may includeanalyzing a user's history, demographic, social or other activities,friends' social or other activities, subscriptions, or any of thepreceding of other users similar to the user (based, e.g., on sharedinterests, connections, or events)). Particular embodiments may utilizeplatform targeting, which may involve platform and “like” impressiondata; contextual signals (e.g., “Who is viewing now or has viewedrecently the page for COCA-COLA?”); light-weight connections (e.g.,“check-ins”); connection lookalikes; fans; extracted keywords; EMUadvertising; inferential advertising; coefficients, affinities, or othersocial-graph information; friends-of-friends connections; pinning orboosting; deals; polls; household income, social clusters or groups;products detected in images or other media; social- or open-graph edgetypes; geo-prediction; views of profile or pages; status updates orother user posts (analysis of which may involve natural-languageprocessing or keyword extraction); events information; or collaborativefiltering. Identifying and targeting users may also implicate privacysettings (such as user opt-outs), data hashing, or data anonymization,as appropriate.

The centralized embodiment depicted in FIG. 8A may be well-suited todeployment as a new system or as an upgrade to an existing system,because the logic is incorporated into the messaging server 826. Incontrast, FIG. 8B depicts an exemplary distributed messaging system 850,in which functionality for selecting dominant/relevant participants anddisplaying a reduced-size interface is distributed and remotelyaccessible from the messaging server. Examples of a distributed system850 include a client-server architecture, a 3-tier architecture, anN-tier architecture, a tightly-coupled or clustered architecture, apeer-to-peer architecture, a master-slave architecture, a shareddatabase architecture, and other types of distributed systems.

Many of the components depicted in FIG. 8B are identical to those inFIG. 8A, and a description of these elements is not repeated here forthe sake of brevity. The primary difference between the centralizedembodiment and the distributed embodiment is the addition of a separateephemeral server 852, which hosts the relevant ephemeral content logic832. The ephemeral server 852 may be distinct from the communicationsserver 826 but may communicate with the communications server 826,either directly or through the network 824, to provide the functionalityof the ephemeral content logic 832 to the communications server 826.

The embodiment depicted in FIG. 8B may be particularly well suited toallow exemplary embodiments to be deployed alongside existing messagingsystems, for example when it is difficult or undesirable to replace anexisting messaging server. Additionally, in some cases thecommunications server 826 may have limited resources (e.g. processing ormemory resources) that limit or preclude the addition of the additionalpivot functionality. In such situations, the capabilities describedherein may still be provided through the separate communications server852.

FIG. 8C illustrates an example of a social networking graph 838. Inexemplary embodiments, a social networking service may store one or moresocial graphs 838 in one or more data stores as a social graph datastructure via the social networking service.

The social graph 838 may include multiple nodes, such as user nodes 854and concept nodes 856. The social graph 838 may furthermore includeedges 858 connecting the nodes. The nodes and edges of social graph 838may be stored as data objects, for example, in a data store (such as asocial-graph database). Such a data store may include one or moresearchable or queryable indexes of nodes or edges of social graph 838.

The social graph 838 may be accessed by a social-networking server 826,client system 810, third-party system, or any other approved system ordevice for suitable applications.

A user node 854 may correspond to a user of the social-networkingsystem. A user may be an individual (human user), an entity (e.g., anenterprise, business, or third-party application), or a group (e.g., ofindividuals or entities) that interacts or communicates with or over thesocial-networking system. In exemplary embodiments, when a userregisters for an account with the social-networking system, thesocial-networking system may create a user node 854 corresponding to theuser, and store the user node 854 in one or more data stores. Users anduser nodes 854 described herein may, where appropriate, refer toregistered users and user nodes 854 associated with registered users. Inaddition or as an alternative, users and user nodes 854 described hereinmay, where appropriate, refer to users that have not registered with thesocial-networking system. In particular embodiments, a user node 854 maybe associated with information provided by a user or informationgathered by various systems, including the social-networking system. Asan example and not by way of limitation, a user may provide their name,profile picture, contact information, birth date, sex, marital status,family status, employment, education background, preferences, interests,or other demographic information. In particular embodiments, a user node854 may be associated with one or more data objects corresponding toinformation associated with a user. In particular embodiments, a usernode 854 may correspond to one or more webpages. A user node 854 may beassociated with a unique user identifier for the user in thesocial-networking system.

In particular embodiments, a concept node 856 may correspond to aconcept. As an example and not by way of limitation, a concept maycorrespond to a place (such as, for example, a movie theater,restaurant, landmark, or city); a website (such as, for example, awebsite associated with the social-network service or a third-partywebsite associated with a web-application server); an entity (such as,for example, a person, business, group, sports team, or celebrity); aresource (such as, for example, an audio file, video file, digitalphoto, text file, structured document, or application) which may belocated within the social-networking system or on an external server,such as a web-application server; real or intellectual property (suchas, for example, a sculpture, painting, movie, game, song, idea,photograph, or written work); a game; an activity; an idea or theory;another suitable concept; or two or more such concepts. A concept node556 may be associated with information of a concept provided by a useror information gathered by various systems, including thesocial-networking system. As an example and not by way of limitation,information of a concept may include a name or a title; one or moreimages (e.g., an image of the cover page of a book); a location (e.g.,an address or a geographical location); a website (which may beassociated with a URL); contact information (e.g., a phone number or anemail address); other suitable concept information; or any suitablecombination of such information. In particular embodiments, a conceptnode 856 may be associated with one or more data objects correspondingto information associated with concept node 856. In particularembodiments, a concept node 856 may correspond to one or more webpages.

In particular embodiments, a node in social graph 838 may represent orbe represented by a webpage (which may be referred to as a “profilepage”). Profile pages may be hosted by or accessible to thesocial-networking system. Profile pages may also be hosted onthird-party websites associated with a third-party server. As an exampleand not by way of limitation, a profile page corresponding to aparticular external webpage may be the particular external webpage andthe profile page may correspond to a particular concept node 856.Profile pages may be viewable by all or a selected subset of otherusers. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user node 854 mayhave a corresponding user-profile page in which the corresponding usermay add content, make declarations, or otherwise express himself orherself. A business page may comprise a user-profile page for a commerceentity. As another example and not by way of limitation, a concept node856 may have a corresponding concept-profile page in which one or moreusers may add content, make declarations, or express themselves,particularly in relation to the concept corresponding to concept node856.

In particular embodiments, a concept node 856 may represent athird-party webpage or resource hosted by a third-party system. Thethird-party webpage or resource may include, among other elements,content, a selectable or other icon, or other inter-actable object(which may be implemented, for example, in JavaScript, AJAX, or PHPcodes) representing an action or activity. As an example and not by wayof limitation, a third-party webpage may include a selectable icon suchas “like,” “check in,” “eat,” “recommend,” or another suitable action oractivity. A user viewing the third-party webpage may perform an actionby selecting one of the icons (e.g., “eat”), causing a client system tosend to the social-networking system a message indicating the user'saction. In response to the message, the social-networking system maycreate an edge (e.g., an “eat” edge) between a user node 854corresponding to the user and a concept node 856 corresponding to thethird-party webpage or resource and store edge 858 in one or more datastores.

In particular embodiments, a pair of nodes in social graph 838 may beconnected to each other by one or more edges 858. An edge 858 connectinga pair of nodes may represent a relationship between the pair of nodes.In particular embodiments, an edge 858 may include or represent one ormore data objects or attributes corresponding to the relationshipbetween a pair of nodes. As an example and not by way of limitation, afirst user may indicate that a second user is a “friend” of the firstuser. In response to this indication, the social-networking system maysend a “friend request” to the second user. If the second user confirmsthe “friend request,” the social-networking system may create an edge858 connecting the first user's user node 854 to the second user's usernode 854 in social graph 838 and store edge 858 as social-graphinformation in one or more data stores. In the example of FIG. 8C,social graph 838 includes an edge 858 indicating a friend relationbetween user nodes 854 of user “Amanda” and user “Dorothy.” Althoughthis disclosure describes or illustrates particular edges 858 withparticular attributes connecting particular user nodes 854, thisdisclosure contemplates any suitable edges 858 with any suitableattributes connecting user nodes 854. As an example and not by way oflimitation, an edge 858 may represent a friendship, family relationship,business or employment relationship, fan relationship, followerrelationship, visitor relationship, subscriber relationship,superior/subordinate relationship, reciprocal relationship,non-reciprocal relationship, another suitable type of relationship, ortwo or more such relationships. Moreover, although this disclosuregenerally describes nodes as being connected, this disclosure alsodescribes users or concepts as being connected. Herein, references tousers or concepts being connected may, where appropriate, refer to thenodes corresponding to those users or concepts being connected in socialgraph 838 by one or more edges 858.

In particular embodiments, an edge 858 between a user node 854 and aconcept node 856 may represent a particular action or activity performedby a user associated with user node 854 toward a concept associated witha concept node 856. As an example and not by way of limitation, asillustrated in FIG. 8C, a user may “like,” “attended,” “played,”“listened,” “cooked,” “worked at,” or “watched” a concept, each of whichmay correspond to an edge type or subtype. A concept-profile pagecorresponding to a concept node 856 may include, for example, aselectable “check in” icon (such as, for example, a clickable “check in”icon) or a selectable “add to favorites” icon. Similarly, after a userclicks these icons, the social-networking system may create a “favorite”edge or a “check in” edge in response to a user's action correspondingto a respective action. As another example and not by way of limitation,a user (user “Carla”) may listen to a particular song (“Across the Sea”)using a particular application (SPOTIFY, which is an online musicapplication). In this case, the social-networking system may create a“listened” edge 858 and a “used” edge (as illustrated in FIG. 8C)between user nodes 854 corresponding to the user and concept nodes 856corresponding to the song and application to indicate that the userlistened to the song and used the application. Moreover, thesocial-networking system may create a “played” edge 858 (as illustratedin FIG. 8C) between concept nodes 856 corresponding to the song and theapplication to indicate that the particular song was played by theparticular application. In this case, “played” edge 858 corresponds toan action performed by an external application (SPOTIFY) on an externalaudio file (the song “Across the Sea”). Although this disclosuredescribes particular edges 858 with particular attributes connectinguser nodes 854 and concept nodes 856, this disclosure contemplates anysuitable edges 858 with any suitable attributes connecting user nodes854 and concept nodes 856. Moreover, although this disclosure describesedges between a user node 854 and a concept node 856 representing asingle relationship, this disclosure contemplates edges between a usernode 854 and a concept node 856 representing one or more relationships.As an example and not by way of limitation, an edge 858 may representboth that a user likes and has used at a particular concept.Alternatively, another edge 858 may represent each type of relationship(or multiples of a single relationship) between a user node 854 and aconcept node 856 (as illustrated in FIG. 8C between user node 854 foruser “Edwin” and concept node 856 for “SPOTIFY”).

In particular embodiments, the social-networking system may create anedge 858 between a user node 854 and a concept node 856 in social graph838. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user viewing aconcept-profile page (such as, for example, by using a web browser or aspecial-purpose application hosted by the user's client system) mayindicate that he or she likes the concept represented by the conceptnode 856 by clicking or selecting a “Like” icon, which may cause theuser's client system to send to the social-networking system a messageindicating the user's liking of the concept associated with theconcept-profile page. In response to the message, the social-networkingsystem may create an edge 858 between user node 854 associated with theuser and concept node 856, as illustrated by “like” edge 858 between theuser and concept node 856. In particular embodiments, thesocial-networking system may store an edge 858 in one or more datastores. In particular embodiments, an edge 858 may be automaticallyformed by the social-networking system in response to a particular useraction. As an example and not by way of limitation, if a first useruploads a picture, watches a movie, or listens to a song, an edge 858may be formed between user node 854 corresponding to the first user andconcept nodes 856 corresponding to those concepts. Although thisdisclosure describes forming particular edges 858 in particular manners,this disclosure contemplates forming any suitable edges 858 in anysuitable manner.

The social graph 838 may further comprise a plurality of product nodes.Product nodes may represent particular products that may be associatedwith a particular business. A business may provide a product catalog toa consumer-to-business service and the consumer-to-business service maytherefore represent each of the products within the product in thesocial graph 838 with each product being in a distinct product node. Aproduct node may comprise information relating to the product, such aspricing information, descriptive information, manufacturer information,availability information, and other relevant information. For example,each of the items on a menu for a restaurant may be represented withinthe social graph 838 with a product node describing each of the items. Aproduct node may be linked by an edge to the business providing theproduct. Where multiple businesses provide a product, each business mayhave a distinct product node associated with its providing of theproduct or may each link to the same product node. A product node may belinked by an edge to each user that has purchased, rated, owns,recommended, or viewed the product, with the edge describing the natureof the relationship (e.g., purchased, rated, owns, recommended, viewed,or other relationship). Each of the product nodes may be associated witha graph id and an associated merchant id by virtue of the linkedmerchant business. Products available from a business may therefore becommunicated to a user by retrieving the available product nodes linkedto the user node for the business within the social graph 838. Theinformation for a product node may be manipulated by thesocial-networking system as a product object that encapsulatesinformation regarding the referenced product.

As such, the social graph 838 may be used to infer shared interests,shared experiences, or other shared or common attributes of two or moreusers of a social-networking system. For instance, two or more userseach having an edge to a common business, product, media item,institution, or other entity represented in the social graph 838 mayindicate a shared relationship with that entity, which may be used tosuggest customization of a use of a social-networking system, includinga messaging system, for one or more users.

The embodiments described above may be performed by a messagingarchitecture, an example of which is next described with reference toFIG. 9.

Messaging Architecture

FIG. 9 illustrates an embodiment of a plurality of servers implementingvarious functions of a messaging service 900 suitable for use withexemplary embodiments. It will be appreciated that differentdistributions of work and functions may be used in various embodimentsof a messaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise a domain name front end 902. Thedomain name front end 902 may be assigned one or more domain namesassociated with the messaging service 900 in a domain name system (DNS).The domain name front end 902 may receive incoming connections anddistribute the connections to servers providing various messagingservices.

The messaging service 902 may comprise one or more chat servers 904. Thechat servers 904 may comprise front-end servers for receiving andtransmitting user-to-user messaging updates such as chat messages.Incoming connections may be assigned to the chat servers 904 by thedomain name front end 902 based on workload balancing.

The messaging service 900 may comprise backend servers 908. The backendservers 908 may perform specialized tasks in the support of the chatoperations of the front-end chat servers 904. A plurality of differenttypes of backend servers 908 may be used. It will be appreciated thatthe assignment of types of tasks to different backend serves 908 mayvary in different embodiments. In some embodiments some of the back-endservices provided by dedicated servers may be combined onto a singleserver or a set of servers each performing multiple tasks dividedbetween different servers in the embodiment described herein. Similarly,in some embodiments tasks of some of dedicated back-end serversdescribed herein may be divided between different servers of differentserver groups.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more offline storageservers 910. The one or more offline storage servers 910 may storemessaging content for currently-offline messaging clients in hold forwhen the messaging clients reconnect.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more sessions servers 912.The one or more session servers 912 may maintain session state ofconnected messaging clients.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more presence servers 914.The one or more presence servers 914 may maintain presence informationfor the messaging service 900. Presence information may correspond touser-specific information indicating whether or not a given user has anonline messaging client and is available for chatting, has an onlinemessaging client but is currently away from it, does not have an onlinemessaging client, and any other presence state.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more push storage servers916. The one or more push storage servers 916 may cache push requestsand transmit the push requests to messaging clients. Push requests maybe used to wake messaging clients, to notify messaging clients that amessaging update is available, and to otherwise performserver-side-driven interactions with messaging clients.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more group servers 918.The one or more group servers 918 may maintain lists of groups, addusers to groups, remove users from groups, and perform the reception,caching, and forwarding of group chat messages.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more block list servers920. The one or more block list servers 920 may maintain user-specificblock lists, the user-specific incoming-block lists indicating for eachuser the one or more other users that are forbidden from transmittingmessages to that user. Alternatively or additionally, the one or moreblock list servers 920 may maintain user-specific outgoing-block listsindicating for each user the one or more other users that that user isforbidden from transmitting messages to. It will be appreciated thatincoming-block lists and outgoing-block lists may be stored incombination in, for example, a database, with the incoming-block listsand outgoing-block lists representing different views of a samerepository of block information.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more last seen informationservers 922. The one or more last seen information servers 922 mayreceive, store, and maintain information indicating the last seenlocation, status, messaging client, and other elements of a user's lastseen connection to the messaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more key servers 924. Theone or more key servers may host public keys for public/private keyencrypted communication.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more profile photo servers926. The one or more profile photo servers 926 may store and makeavailable for retrieval profile photos for the plurality of users of themessaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more spam logging servers928. The one or more spam logging servers 928 may log known andsuspected spam (e.g., unwanted messages, particularly those of apromotional nature). The one or more spam logging servers 928 may beoperative to analyze messages to determine whether they are spam and toperform punitive measures, in some embodiments, against suspectedspammers (users that send spam messages).

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more statistics servers930. The one or more statistics servers may compile and store statisticsinformation related to the operation of the messaging service 900 andthe behavior of the users of the messaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more web servers 932. Theone or more web servers 932 may engage in hypertext transport protocol(HTTP) and hypertext transport protocol secure (HTTPS) connections withweb browsers.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more chat activitymonitoring servers 934. The one or more chat activity monitoring servers934 may monitor the chats of users to determine unauthorized ordiscouraged behavior by the users of the messaging service 900. The oneor more chat activity monitoring servers 934 may work in cooperationwith the spam logging servers 928 and block list servers 920, with theone or more chat activity monitoring servers 934 identifying spam orother discouraged behavior and providing spam information to the spamlogging servers 928 and blocking information, where appropriate to theblock list servers 920.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more sync servers 936. Theone or more sync servers 936 may sync the messaging system 500 withcontact information from a messaging client, such as an address book ona mobile phone, to determine contacts for a user in the messagingservice 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more multimedia servers938. The one or more multimedia servers may store multimedia (e.g.,images, video, audio) in transit between messaging clients, multimediacached for offline endpoints, and may perform transcoding of multimedia.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more payment servers 940.The one or more payment servers 940 may process payments from users. Theone or more payment servers 940 may connect to external third-partyservers for the performance of payments.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more registration servers942. The one or more registration servers 942 may register new users ofthe messaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more voice relay servers944. The one or more voice relay servers 944 may relayvoice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) voice communication betweenmessaging clients for the performance of VoIP calls.

The above-described methods may be embodied as instructions on acomputer readable medium or as part of a computing architecture. FIG. 10illustrates an embodiment of an exemplary computing architecture 1000suitable for implementing various embodiments as previously described.In one embodiment, the computing architecture 1000 may comprise or beimplemented as part of an electronic device, such as a computer 1001.The embodiments are not limited in this context.

As used in this application, the terms “system” and “component” areintended to refer to a computer-related entity, either hardware, acombination of hardware and software, software, or software inexecution, examples of which are provided by the exemplary computingarchitecture 1000. For example, a component can be, but is not limitedto being, a process running on a processor, a processor, a hard diskdrive, multiple storage drives (of optical and/or magnetic storagemedium), an object, an executable, a thread of execution, a program,and/or a computer. By way of illustration, both an application runningon a server and the server can be a component. One or more componentscan reside within a process and/or thread of execution, and a componentcan be localized on one computer and/or distributed between two or morecomputers. Further, components may be communicatively coupled to eachother by various types of communications media to coordinate operations.The coordination may involve the uni-directional or bi-directionalexchange of information. For instance, the components may communicateinformation in the form of signals communicated over the communicationsmedia. The information can be implemented as signals allocated tovarious signal lines. In such allocations, each message is a signal.Further embodiments, however, may alternatively employ data messages.Such data messages may be sent across various connections. Exemplaryconnections include parallel interfaces, serial interfaces, and businterfaces.

The computing architecture 1000 includes various common computingelements, such as one or more processors, multi-core processors,co-processors, memory units, chipsets, controllers, peripherals,interfaces, oscillators, timing devices, video cards, audio cards,multimedia input/output (I/O) components, power supplies, and so forth.The embodiments, however, are not limited to implementation by thecomputing architecture 1000.

As shown in FIG. 10, the computing architecture 1000 comprises aprocessing unit 1002, a system memory 1004 and a system bus 1006. Theprocessing unit 1002 can be any of various commercially availableprocessors, including without limitation an AMD® Athlon®, Duron® andOpteron® processors; ARM® application, embedded and secure processors;IBM® and Motorola® DragonBall® and PowerPC® processors; IBM and Sony®Cell processors; Intel® Celeron®, Core (2) Duo®, Itanium®, Pentium®,Xeon®, and XScale® processors; and similar processors. Dualmicroprocessors, multi-core processors, and other multi-processorarchitectures may also be employed as the processing unit 1002.

The system bus 1006 provides an interface for system componentsincluding, but not limited to, the system memory 1004 to the processingunit 1002. The system bus 1006 can be any of several types of busstructure that may further interconnect to a memory bus (with or withouta memory controller), a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of avariety of commercially available bus architectures. Interface adaptersmay connect to the system bus 1006 via a slot architecture. Example slotarchitectures may include without limitation Accelerated Graphics Port(AGP), Card Bus, (Extended) Industry Standard Architecture ((E)ISA),Micro Channel Architecture (MCA), NuBus, Peripheral ComponentInterconnect (Extended) (PCI(X)), PCI Express, Personal Computer MemoryCard International Association (PCMCIA), and the like.

The computing architecture 1000 may comprise or implement variousarticles of manufacture. An article of manufacture may comprise acomputer-readable storage medium to store logic. Examples of acomputer-readable storage medium may include any tangible media capableof storing electronic data, including volatile memory or non-volatilememory, removable or non-removable memory, erasable or non-erasablememory, writeable or re-writeable memory, and so forth. Examples oflogic may include executable computer program instructions implementedusing any suitable type of code, such as source code, compiled code,interpreted code, executable code, static code, dynamic code,object-oriented code, visual code, and the like. Embodiments may also beat least partly implemented as instructions contained in or on anon-transitory computer-readable medium, which may be read and executedby one or more processors to enable performance of the operationsdescribed herein.

The system memory 1004 may include various types of computer-readablestorage media in the form of one or more higher speed memory units, suchas read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM(DRAM), Double-Data-Rate DRAM (DDRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), staticRAM (SRAM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable programmable ROM (EPROM),electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory, polymermemory such as ferroelectric polymer memory, ovonic memory, phase changeor ferroelectric memory, silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS)memory, magnetic or optical cards, an array of devices such as RedundantArray of Independent Disks (RAID) drives, solid state memory devices(e.g., USB memory, solid state drives (SSD) and any other type ofstorage media suitable for storing information. In the illustratedembodiment shown in FIG. 10, the system memory 1004 can includenon-volatile memory 1008 and/or volatile memory 1010. A basicinput/output system (BIOS) can be stored in the non-volatile memory1008.

The computing architecture 1000 may include various types ofcomputer-readable storage media in the form of one or more lower speedmemory units, including an internal (or external) hard disk drive (HDD)1012, a magnetic floppy disk drive (FDD) 1014 to read from or write to aremovable magnetic disk 1016, and an optical disk drive 1018 to readfrom or write to a removable optical disk 1020 (e.g., a CD-ROM or DVD).The HDD 1012, FDD 1014 and optical disk drive 1020 can be connected tothe system bus 1006 by an HDD interface 1022, an FDD interface 1024 andan optical drive interface 1026, respectively. The HDD interface 1022for external drive implementations can include at least one or both ofUniversal Serial Bus (USB) and IEEE 694 interface technologies.

The drives and associated computer-readable media provide volatileand/or nonvolatile storage of data, data structures, computer-executableinstructions, and so forth. For example, a number of program modules canbe stored in the drives and memory units 1008, 1012, including anoperating system 1028, one or more application programs 1030, otherprogram modules 1032, and program data 1034. In one embodiment, the oneor more application programs 1030, other program modules 1032, andprogram data 1034 can include, for example, the various applicationsand/or components of the messaging system 500.

A user can enter commands and information into the computer 1001 throughone or more wire/wireless input devices, for example, a keyboard 1036and a pointing device, such as a mouse 1038. Other input devices mayinclude microphones, infra-red (IR) remote controls, radio-frequency(RF) remote controls, game pads, stylus pens, card readers, dongles,finger print readers, gloves, graphics tablets, joysticks, keyboards,retina readers, touch screens (e.g., capacitive, resistive, etc.),trackballs, trackpads, sensors, styluses, and the like. These and otherinput devices are often connected to the processing unit 1002 through aninput device interface 1040 that is coupled to the system bus 1006, butcan be connected by other interfaces such as a parallel port, IEEE 694serial port, a game port, a USB port, an IR interface, and so forth.

A monitor 1042 or other type of display device is also connected to thesystem bus 1006 via an interface, such as a video adaptor 1044. Themonitor 1042 may be internal or external to the computer 1001. Inaddition to the monitor 1042, a computer typically includes otherperipheral output devices, such as speakers, printers, and so forth.

The computer 1001 may operate in a networked environment using logicalconnections via wire and/or wireless communications to one or moreremote computers, such as a remote computer 1044. The remote computer1044 can be a workstation, a server computer, a router, a personalcomputer, portable computer, microprocessor-based entertainmentappliance, a peer device or other common network node, and typicallyincludes many or all of the elements described relative to the computer1001, although, for purposes of brevity, only a memory/storage device1046 is illustrated. The logical connections depicted includewire/wireless connectivity to a local area network (LAN) 1048 and/orlarger networks, for example, a wide area network (WAN) 1050. Such LANand WAN networking environments are commonplace in offices andcompanies, and facilitate enterprise-wide computer networks, such asintranets, all of which may connect to a global communications network,for example, the Internet.

When used in a LAN networking environment, the computer 1001 isconnected to the LAN 1048 through a wire and/or wireless communicationnetwork interface or adaptor 1052. The adaptor 1052 can facilitate wireand/or wireless communications to the LAN 1048, which may also include awireless access point disposed thereon for communicating with thewireless functionality of the adaptor 1052.

When used in a WAN networking environment, the computer 1001 can includea modem 1054, or is connected to a communications server on the WAN1050, or has other means for establishing communications over the WAN1050, such as by way of the Internet. The modem 1054, which can beinternal or external and a wire and/or wireless device, connects to thesystem bus 1006 via the input device interface 1040. In a networkedenvironment, program modules depicted relative to the computer 1001, orportions thereof, can be stored in the remote memory/storage device1046. It will be appreciated that the network connections shown areexemplary and other means of establishing a communications link betweenthe computers can be used.

The computer 1001 is operable to communicate with wire and wirelessdevices or entities using the IEEE 802 family of standards, such aswireless devices operatively disposed in wireless communication (e.g.,IEEE 802.13 over-the-air modulation techniques). This includes at leastWi-Fi (or Wireless Fidelity), WiMax, and Bluetooth™ wirelesstechnologies, among others. Thus, the communication can be a predefinedstructure as with a conventional network or simply an ad hoccommunication between at least two devices. Wi-Fi networks use radiotechnologies called IEEE 802.13x (a, b, g, n, etc.) to provide secure,reliable, fast wireless connectivity. A Wi-Fi network can be used toconnect computers to each other, to the Internet, and to wire networks(which use IEEE 802.3-related media and functions).

FIG. 11 is a block diagram depicting an exemplary communicationsarchitecture 1100 suitable for implementing various embodiments aspreviously described. The communications architecture 1100 includesvarious common communications elements, such as a transmitter, receiver,transceiver, radio, network interface, baseband processor, antenna,amplifiers, filters, power supplies, and so forth. The embodiments,however, are not limited to implementation by the communicationsarchitecture 1100.

As shown in FIG. 11, the communications architecture 1100 includes oneor more clients 1102 and servers 1104. The clients 1102 may implementthe client device 510. The servers 1104 may implement the server device526. The clients 1102 and the servers 1104 are operatively connected toone or more respective client data stores 1106 and server data stores1108 that can be employed to store information local to the respectiveclients 1102 and servers 1104, such as cookies and/or associatedcontextual information.

The clients 1102 and the servers 1104 may communicate informationbetween each other using a communication framework 1110. Thecommunications framework 1110 may implement any well-knowncommunications techniques and protocols. The communications framework1110 may be implemented as a packet-switched network (e.g., publicnetworks such as the Internet, private networks such as an enterpriseintranet, and so forth), a circuit-switched network (e.g., the publicswitched telephone network), or a combination of a packet-switchednetwork and a circuit-switched network (with suitable gateways andtranslators).

The communications framework 1110 may implement various networkinterfaces arranged to accept, communicate, and connect to acommunications network. A network interface may be regarded as aspecialized form of an input output interface. Network interfaces mayemploy connection protocols including without limitation direct connect,Ethernet (e.g., thick, thin, twisted pair 10/100/1000 Base T, and thelike), token ring, wireless network interfaces, cellular networkinterfaces, IEEE 802.11a-x network interfaces, IEEE 802.16 networkinterfaces, IEEE 802.20 network interfaces, and the like. Further,multiple network interfaces may be used to engage with variouscommunications network types. For example, multiple network interfacesmay be employed to allow for the communication over broadcast,multicast, and unicast networks. Should processing requirements dictatea greater amount speed and capacity, distributed network controllerarchitectures may similarly be employed to pool, load balance, andotherwise increase the communicative bandwidth required by clients 1102and the servers 1104. A communications network may be any one and thecombination of wired and/or wireless networks including withoutlimitation a direct interconnection, a secured custom connection, aprivate network (e.g., an enterprise intranet), a public network (e.g.,the Internet), a Personal Area Network (PAN), a Local Area Network(LAN), a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), an Operating Missions as Nodeson the Internet (OMNI), a Wide Area Network (WAN), a wireless network, acellular network, and other communications networks.

FIG. 12 illustrates an embodiment of a device 1200 for use in amulticarrier OFDM system, such as the messaging system 500. The device1200 may implement, for example, software components 1202 as describedwith reference to the messaging component logic 600, the intentdetermination logic 700, and the group selection logic 800. The device1200 may also implement a logic circuit 1204. The logic circuit 1204 mayinclude physical circuits to perform operations described for themessaging system 500. As shown in FIG. 12, device 1200 may include aradio interface 1206, baseband circuitry 1208, and a computing platform1210, although embodiments are not limited to this configuration.

The device 1200 may implement some or all of the structure and/oroperations for the messaging system 500 and/or logic circuit 1204 in asingle computing entity, such as entirely within a single device.Alternatively, the device 1200 may distribute portions of the structureand/or operations for the messaging system 500 and/or logic circuit 1204across multiple computing entities using a distributed systemarchitecture, such as a client-server architecture, a 3-tierarchitecture, an N-tier architecture, a tightly-coupled or clusteredarchitecture, a peer-to-peer architecture, a master-slave architecture,a shared database architecture, and other types of distributed systems.The embodiments are not limited in this context.

In one embodiment, the radio interface 1206 may include a component orcombination of components adapted for transmitting and/or receivingsingle carrier or multi-carrier modulated signals (e.g., includingcomplementary code keying (CCK) and/or orthogonal frequency divisionmultiplexing (OFDM) symbols) although the embodiments are not limited toany specific over-the-air interface or modulation scheme. The radiointerface 1206 may include, for example, a receiver 1212, a transmitter1214 and/or a frequency synthesizer 1216. The radio interface 1206 mayinclude bias controls, a crystal oscillator and/or one or more antennas1218. In another embodiment, the radio interface 1206 may use externalvoltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), surface acoustic wave filters,intermediate frequency (IF) filters and/or RF filters, as desired. Dueto the variety of potential RF interface designs an expansivedescription thereof is omitted.

The baseband circuitry 1208 may communicate with the radio interface1206 to process receive and/or transmit signals and may include, forexample, an analog-to-digital converter 1220 for down convertingreceived signals, and a digital-to-analog converter 1222 forup-converting signals for transmission. Further, the baseband circuitry1208 may include a baseband or physical layer (PHY) processing circuit1224 for PHY link layer processing of respective receive/transmitsignals. The baseband circuitry 1208 may include, for example, aprocessing circuit 1226 for medium access control (MAC)/data link layerprocessing. The baseband circuitry 1208 may include a memory controller1228 for communicating with the processing circuit 1226 and/or acomputing platform 1210, for example, via one or more interfaces 1230.

In some embodiments, the PHY processing circuit 1224 may include a frameconstruction and/or detection module, in combination with additionalcircuitry such as a buffer memory, to construct and/or deconstructcommunication frames, such as radio frames. Alternatively or inaddition, the MAC processing circuit 1226 may share processing forcertain of these functions or perform these processes independent of thePHY processing circuit 1224. In some embodiments, MAC and PHY processingmay be integrated into a single circuit.

The computing platform 1210 may provide computing functionality for thedevice 1200. As shown, the computing platform 1210 may include aprocessing component 1232. In addition to, or alternatively of, thebaseband circuitry 1208, the device 1200 may execute processingoperations or logic for the messaging system 500 and logic circuit 1204using the processing component 1232. The processing component 1232(and/or the PHY 1224 and/or MAC 1226) may comprise various hardwareelements, software elements, or a combination of both. Examples ofhardware elements may include devices, logic devices, components,processors, microprocessors, circuits, processor circuits, circuitelements (e.g., transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors, and soforth), integrated circuits, application specific integrated circuits(ASIC), programmable logic devices (PLD), digital signal processors(DSP), field programmable gate array (FPGA), memory units, logic gates,registers, semiconductor device, chips, microchips, chip sets, and soforth. Examples of software elements may include software components,programs, applications, computer programs, application programs, systemprograms, software development programs, machine programs, operatingsystem software, middleware, firmware, software modules, routines,subroutines, functions, methods, procedures, software interfaces,application program interfaces (API), instruction sets, computing code,computer code, code segments, computer code segments, words, values,symbols, or any combination thereof. Determining whether an embodimentis implemented using hardware elements and/or software elements may varyin accordance with any number of factors, such as desired computationalrate, power levels, heat tolerances, processing cycle budget, input datarates, output data rates, memory resources, data bus speeds and otherdesign or performance constraints, as desired for a givenimplementation.

The computing platform 1210 may further include other platformcomponents 1234. Other platform components 1234 include common computingelements, such as one or more processors, multi-core processors,co-processors, memory units, chipsets, controllers, peripherals,interfaces, oscillators, timing devices, video cards, audio cards,multimedia input/output (I/O) components (e.g., digital displays), powersupplies, and so forth. Examples of memory units may include withoutlimitation various types of computer readable and machine readablestorage media in the form of one or more higher speed memory units, suchas read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM(DRAM), Double-Data-Rate DRAM (DDRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), staticRAM (SRAM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable programmable ROM (EPROM),electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory, polymermemory such as ferroelectric polymer memory, ovonic memory, phase changeor ferroelectric memory, silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS)memory, magnetic or optical cards, an array of devices such as RedundantArray of Independent Disks (RAID) drives, solid state memory devices(e.g., USB memory, solid state drives (SSD) and any other type ofstorage media suitable for storing information.

The device 1200 may be, for example, an ultra-mobile device, a mobiledevice, a fixed device, a machine-to-machine (M2M) device, a personaldigital assistant (PDA), a mobile computing device, a smart phone, atelephone, a digital telephone, a cellular telephone, user equipment,eBook readers, a handset, a one-way pager, a two-way pager, a messagingdevice, a computer, a personal computer (PC), a desktop computer, alaptop computer, a notebook computer, a netbook computer, a handheldcomputer, a tablet computer, a server, a server array or server farm, aweb server, a network server, an Internet server, a work station, amini-computer, a main frame computer, a supercomputer, a networkappliance, a web appliance, a distributed computing system,multiprocessor systems, processor-based systems, consumer electronics,programmable consumer electronics, game devices, television, digitaltelevision, set top box, wireless access point, base station, node B,evolved node B (eNB), subscriber station, mobile subscriber center,radio network controller, router, hub, gateway, bridge, switch, machine,or combination thereof. Accordingly, functions and/or specificconfigurations of the device 1200 described herein, may be included oromitted in various embodiments of the device 1200, as suitably desired.In some embodiments, the device 1200 may be configured to be compatiblewith protocols and frequencies associated one or more of the 3GPP LTESpecifications and/or IEEE 1402.16 Standards for WMANs, and/or otherbroadband wireless networks, cited herein, although the embodiments arenot limited in this respect.

Embodiments of device 1200 may be implemented using single input singleoutput (SISO) architectures. However, certain implementations mayinclude multiple antennas (e.g., antennas 1218) for transmission and/orreception using adaptive antenna techniques for beamforming or spatialdivision multiple access (SDMA) and/or using MIMO communicationtechniques.

The components and features of the device 1200 may be implemented usingany combination of discrete circuitry, application specific integratedcircuits (ASICs), logic gates and/or single chip architectures. Further,the features of the device 1200 may be implemented usingmicrocontrollers, programmable logic arrays and/or microprocessors orany combination of the foregoing where suitably appropriate. It is notedthat hardware, firmware and/or software elements may be collectively orindividually referred to herein as “logic” or “circuit.”

It will be appreciated that the exemplary device 1200 shown in the blockdiagram of FIG. 12 may represent one functionally descriptive example ofmany potential implementations. Accordingly, division, omission orinclusion of block functions depicted in the accompanying figures doesnot infer that the hardware components, circuits, software and/orelements for implementing these functions would be necessarily bedivided, omitted, or included in embodiments.

At least one computer-readable storage medium 1236 may includeinstructions that, when executed, cause a system to perform any of thecomputer-implemented methods described herein.

General Notes on Terminology

Some embodiments may be described using the expression “one embodiment”or “an embodiment” along with their derivatives. These terms mean that aparticular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connectionwith the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment. Theappearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in thespecification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.Moreover, unless otherwise noted the features described above arerecognized to be usable together in any combination. Thus, any featuresdiscussed separately may be employed in combination with each otherunless it is noted that the features are incompatible with each other.

With general reference to notations and nomenclature used herein, thedetailed descriptions herein may be presented in terms of programprocedures executed on a computer or network of computers. Theseprocedural descriptions and representations are used by those skilled inthe art to most effectively convey the substance of their work to othersskilled in the art.

A procedure is here, and generally, conceived to be a self-consistentsequence of operations leading to a desired result. These operations arethose requiring physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually,though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical,magnetic or optical signals capable of being stored, transferred,combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It proves convenient attimes, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to thesesignals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers,or the like. It should be noted, however, that all of these and similarterms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities andare merely convenient labels applied to those quantities.

Further, the manipulations performed are often referred to in terms,such as adding or comparing, which are commonly associated with mentaloperations performed by a human operator. No such capability of a humanoperator is necessary, or desirable in most cases, in any of theoperations described herein, which form part of one or more embodiments.Rather, the operations are machine operations. Useful machines forperforming operations of various embodiments include general purposedigital computers or similar devices.

Some embodiments may be described using the expression “coupled” and“connected” along with their derivatives. These terms are notnecessarily intended as synonyms for each other. For example, someembodiments may be described using the terms “connected” and/or“coupled” to indicate that two or more elements are in direct physicalor electrical contact with each other. The term “coupled,” however, mayalso mean that two or more elements are not in direct contact with eachother, but yet still co-operate or interact with each other.

Various embodiments also relate to apparatus or systems for performingthese operations. This apparatus may be specially constructed for therequired purpose or it may comprise a general purpose computer asselectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored inthe computer. The procedures presented herein are not inherently relatedto a particular computer or other apparatus. Various general purposemachines may be used with programs written in accordance with theteachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct morespecialized apparatus to perform the required method steps. The requiredstructure for a variety of these machines will appear from thedescription given.

It is emphasized that the Abstract of the Disclosure is provided toallow a reader to quickly ascertain the nature of the technicaldisclosure. It is submitted with the understanding that it will not beused to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims. Inaddition, in the foregoing Detailed Description, it can be seen thatvarious features are grouped together in a single embodiment for thepurpose of streamlining the disclosure. This method of disclosure is notto be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimedembodiments require more features than are expressly recited in eachclaim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive subject matterlies in less than all features of a single disclosed embodiment. Thusthe following claims are hereby incorporated into the DetailedDescription, with each claim standing on its own as a separateembodiment. In the appended claims, the terms “including” and “in which”are used as the plain-English equivalents of the respective terms“comprising” and “wherein,” respectively. Moreover, the terms “first,”“second,” “third,” and so forth, are used merely as labels, and are notintended to impose numerical requirements on their objects.

What has been described above includes examples of the disclosedarchitecture. It is, of course, not possible to describe everyconceivable combination of components and/or methodologies, but one ofordinary skill in the art may recognize that many further combinationsand permutations are possible. Accordingly, the novel architecture isintended to embrace all such alterations, modifications and variationsthat fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.

1. A method, comprising: presenting an interface to an application for acommunication service, the application associated with a sending user;presenting an option in the interface to share ephemeral content with aspecified set of users; receiving a selection of the option to share thecontent as the status update; performing at least one of receiving aselection of pre-existing content as shared content, or generating newcontent as shared content; and sending the shared content as anephemeral content message to the specified set of users.
 2. The methodof claim 1, wherein the specified set of users is a mobile devicecontacts list.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the ephemeral contentmessage is transmitted to the communication service as an end-to-endencrypted message.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the ephemeralcontent message comprises an encrypted thumbnail representation of thecontent, an encrypted link to the content, and a decryption key fordecrypting the content.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:receiving a reply to the ephemeral content message from a recipient ofthe ephemeral content message; and generating a one-to-one conversationbetween the sending user and the recipient.
 6. The method of claim 1,wherein the selected group of recipients consists of a selected subsetof a contacts list of the sending user, and further comprising:receiving a reply to the ephemeral content message from a recipient ofthe ephemeral content message; and generating a group conversationbetween the sending user and selected subset of the contacts list. 7.The method of claim 1, wherein the shared content comprises at least oneof an image, a video, a weather report, a news story, text, an audiorecording, a hyperlink, or a location tag.
 8. A non-transitorycomputer-readable medium storing: instructions configured to cause oneor more processors to present an interface to an application for acommunication service, the application associated with a sending user;instructions configured to cause the one or more processors to presentan option to share ephemeral content with a specified set of users;instructions configured to cause the one or more processors to receive aselection of the option to share the content; instructions configured tocause the one or more processors to perform at least one of receiving aselection of pre-existing content as shared content, or generating newcontent as shared content; and instructions configured to cause the oneor more processors to send the shared content as an ephemeral contentmessage to the specified set of users.
 9. The medium of claim 8, whereinthe specified set of users is a mobile device contacts list.
 10. Themedium of claim 8, wherein the ephemeral content message is transmittedto the communication service as an end-to-end encrypted message.
 11. Themedium of claim 8, wherein the ephemeral content message comprises anencrypted thumbnail representation of the content, an encrypted link tothe content, and a decryption key for decrypting the content.
 12. Themedium of claim 8, further storing: instructions configured to cause theone or more processors to receive a reply to the ephemeral contentmessage from a recipient of the ephemeral content message; andgenerating a one-to-one conversation between the sending user and therecipient.
 13. The medium of claim 8, wherein the selected set of usersconsists of a selected subset of a contacts list of the sending user,and further storing: instructions configured to cause the one or moreprocessors to receive a reply to the ephemeral content message from arecipient of the status update; and instructions configured to cause theone or more processors to generate a group conversation between thesending user and selected subset of the contacts list.
 14. The medium ofclaim 8, wherein the shared content comprises at least one of an image,a video, a weather report, a news story, text, an audio recording, ahyperlink, or a location tag.
 15. An apparatus comprising: a displayconfigured to present an interface to an application for a communicationservice, the application associated with a sending user; content sharinglogic, implemented at least partially in hardware, configured to presentan option to share content as ephemeral content with a specified set ofusers, and to receive a selection of the option to share the content;shared content logic, implemented at least partially in hardware,configured to perform at least one of receiving a selection ofpre-existing content as shared content, or generating new content asshared content; and network interface logic, implemented at leastpartially in hardware, configured to send the shared content as anephemeral content message to the specified set of users.
 16. Theapparatus of claim 15, wherein the network interface logic is configuredto retrieve the specified set of users from a mobile device contactslist.
 17. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the network interface logicis configured to transmit the ephemeral content message to thecommunication service as an end-to-end encrypted message.
 18. Theapparatus of claim 15, further comprising message generation logic,implemented at least partially in hardware, configured to package anencrypted thumbnail representation of the content, an encrypted link tothe content, and a decryption key for decrypting the content into theephemeral content message.
 19. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein thenetwork interface logic is further configured to receive a reply to theephemeral content message from a recipient of the ephemeral contentmessage, and further comprising conversation logic, implemented at leastpartially in hardware, configured to generate a one-to-one conversationbetween the sending user and the recipient.
 20. The apparatus of claim15, wherein the specified set of users consists of a selected subset ofa contacts list of the sending user and the network interface logic isfurther configured to receive a reply to the ephemeral content messagefrom a recipient of the ephemeral content message, and furthercomprising conversation logic, implemented at least partially inhardware, configured to generate a group conversation between thesending user and selected subset of the contacts list.